Lost a relative in Hawaii and unsure about their estate or assets? Our law firm helps mainland relatives navigate probate, asset discovery, and estate administration. Call us to start the process.
It has always perplexed the Firm’s lawyers, why serious responsibility for an elderly parent’s welfare and estate is so often reposited in the weak link in the family. Parents are very protective of their ne'er do well child. That child frequently is unemployed and often lives at home with his or her elderly parents. Often these are the sons and daughters whom the other siblings (or the elderly parent) appoint with the most significant responsibilities. Do not forget elder abuse is a crime of opportunity and this is when parents may be at their most vulnerable to undue influence by an unscrupulous caregiver.
Unwitnessed, handwritten wills or Holographic Wills, as the law more particularly describes them, can be perfectly valid and enforceable in Hawaii if certain drafting conditions are met. As this article discusses more particularly below, Hawaii is among just five other states that has a specific law that provides for very permissive criteria allowing a probate judge to accept wills that may not otherwise conform to the strict standards of a properly witnessed and attested to will. The Hawaii Revised Statutes (“HRS” or the “Statute”) § 560:2-502(b) and (c) states a Holographic Will: (a) is valid as a holographic will, whether or not witnessed, if the signature and material portions of the document are in the testator's handwriting. (c) Intent that the document constitute the testator's will can be established by extrinsic evidence, including, for holographic wills, portions of the document that are not in the testator's handwriting. It is interesting to note that since the outbreak of Covid in Hawaii in March 2020, this Firm has litigated more Holographic Will cases than it has in its 30 prior years of existence! This development is unsurprising since for several years, adults, particularly the elderly, were advised not to leave their homes. Additionally, statistics of thousands of Americans dying every day were an effective reminder for people to put their estate plans in order. Since not leaving the house precluded visits to attorneys’ offices, many people decided to handwrite their wills. Moreover, more lawyers than ever were working remotely, and the idea of gathering the testator, his or her attorney and two witnesses could not be easily accomplished. This sudden frequency of Holographic Wills appearing in probate courts this year may be attributed to individuals’ prior difficulty in obtaining an estate planner during Covid.