ABSTRACT
The global COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to plan for death, including the transmission of property through a valid will. Surprisingly little is known, however, about when people tend to make wills, how they go about doing so, and whether those practices vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To begin building a foundation of knowledge, a research team comprised of United States and Australian lawyers and economists recently conducted the first-ever behavioural economics empirical study exploring these questions. This Article reports the results of the team’s survey of both members of the Australian general public and estate planning lawyers in that country. The research aim was to elicit and compare the attitudes of members of both groups on three questions: (1) when people should begin to plan their estates in anticipation of death; (2) the relative role that the lawyer (compared to the client) should play in the estate planning process; and (3) whether remote witnessing rules for wills – newly adopted during the pandemic in several jurisdictions including states in Australia and the United States – have any impact on individuals’ expressed preferences towards will making …
Cockburn, Tina and Purser, Kelly and Chan, Ho Fai and Crawford, Bridget J and Whyte, Stephen and Dulleck, Uwe, A Behavioral Economics Analysis of Will Making Preferences: When to Begin and Who Should Have the Most Input? (August 11, 2022), 32 Minnesota Journal of International Law 1 (2023).
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