Article: Mitigating the Lack of Wills One Brochure at a Time

Katelyn Barker, a law student at Texas Tech School of Law, recently published an article entitled, Mitigating the Lack of Wills One Brochure at a Time, Estate Planning Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, 2022.

Provided below is the abstract to the Article: 

A majority of Americans die without a will, which floods the courts with lawsuits concerning the disbursal of the deceased’s estate. Litigation also regularly ensues in the form of contested wills on behalf of individuals who die with an outdated will. The lack of knowledge surrounding estate planning is a leading factor contributing to the scarcity of wills in America. Incorporating a prompting system and informational brochure into the driver’s license renewal process will deplete the lack of knowledge component, and people will be mandatorily reminded of estate planning; this will eventually cause the number of updated wills to increase. By targeting young people at the age of eighteen, the prompt and informational brochure will effectively reach the age group cited as having the least number of wills in place. If the estate planning prompt and brochure are adopted by the DMV, there will likely be a momentous drop in the number of lawsuits concerning the estates of those who have died intestate or with an outdated will.