Wills Formalities in Post-Pandemic World: A Research Agenda

The COVID-19 global pandemic has brought new focus to human mortality. The virus has reminded many people that they need to have a valid will or otherwise make plans for the effective transmission of their property on death. Yet stay-at-home orders and social distancing recommendations make it difficult or impossible to comply with the traditional rules for validly executing wills. Across most common law jurisdictions, the traditional requirements call for two witnesses in the physical presence of the testator. Because of the practical difficulties of safely executing documents during the pandemic with witnesses assembled in physical proximity, many jurisdictions internationally have implemented emergency measures that permit the remote witnessing of wills and other estate planning documents via audio-visual platforms like Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime. This essay employs a dual Australian-United States perspective to investigate the purposes of traditional will-making requirements and to suggest their continued vitality in the context of remotely witnessed wills. Although emergency measures adopted in both countries arguably have made it easier to execute wills during the pandemic, these provisions will, for the most part, sunset in the near future. The desirability of increasing access to legal services generally, and will-making specifically, might argue in favor of making permanent the pandemic-era rules for will executions. Before embracing a permanent change, though, there needs to be more research. This essay proposes a research agenda comprised of four future empirical studies of pandemic and post-pandemic-era will-making. These studies aim to identify and address any problems with the remote witnessing of testamentary documents. The results of these and other studies can facilitate the development of evidence-based, workable rules for effective will-making in the twenty-first century

Dementia and the cognitive requirements of Banks v Goodfellow

In a majority of syndromes giving rise to questionable testamentary capacity, concerns center around cognitive function more so than frank psychiatric disorder. Dementia, a cognitive illness, poses the largest threat to testamentary capacity in modern society. Cognitive assessment is therefore central to the evaluation and determination of testamentary capacity as well as to the formulation of the reasoning base from which expert opinions on the matter are formed. A better understanding of the way in which dementia related cognitive impairment can impact upon a testator’s ability to fulfil the relevant legal criteria, would inform the focus of cognitive assessment within the context of testamentary capacity evaluations. In this article we review the recent past (i.e. 10 years) literature informing ‘what cognitive abilities are required to satisfy the legal criteria for testamentary capacity’. There is an alarming scarcity of work in this area with little discussion spanning beyond a general acknowledgement of the importance of executive function. Several additional areas of relevant cognitive function are highlighted. Further work in this area is required to rectify the current subjective, unreliable and unstandardized approach to the cognitive evaluation of testators

Advance health directives: competing perceptions, intentions and use by patients and doctors in Queensland

This paper reports on mixed method empirical research undertaken with individuals who have completed advance health directives ('principals') and doctors who have either attested to the principal's capacity when the document was completed or been called upon to use these documents in clinical settings. Principals and doctors appear to have different understandings of the purpose of these documents and their role in decision-making about medical treatment. We recommend changes to the advance health directive form in Queensland to promote informed decision-making which will help to better align perceptions of principals and doctors about the role of these documents

A Behavioral Economics Analysis of Will Making Preferences: When to Begin and Who Should Have the Most Input

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 behavioral economics empirical study exploring these questions. This Article reports the results of the team\u27s 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\u27 expressed preferences towards will making. The study yields three significant findings. First, members of the legal profession in Australia tend to prefer the execution of a will at a much younger age than members of the general public do. Estate planning attorneys tend to cite age 29 as the “right” time to make a will, but the general public tends to think that age 47 is best. Second, laypeople in Australia tend to hold widely divergent opinions on the appropriate balance of client vs. professional input into the estate planning process. Those who already have engaged at least once in the will making process tend to desire far greater levels of input from estate planning attorneys than those who have never made a will. Attorneys, in contrast, have relatively uniform views about the same question, tending to cite 70% as the appropriate percentage of estate planning decisions that should be driven by the client. Finally, among both members of the general public and attorneys in Australia, expressed preferences on these matters appear to be largely unaffected by any stated benefits or drawbacks of remotely executed wills. The survey\u27s focus on Australia was intentional. Australia is an industrialized, democratic country with both a largely capitalist economic and a history of innovation in the law of wills, trusts and estates. Furthermore, Australia\u27s population is smaller than that of the United States, making it easier to obtain a more representative sample. At the same time, we conceive of this study as the beginning point for further, cross-jurisdictional inquiries. Future research can explore whether or how attitudes about will making differ across jurisdictions, using the results reported here as a touchstone. Separate from any country-specific considerations, knowledge about when people make wills, how they do so, and differences between and among jurisdictions will allow lawmakers to make more informed decisions about whether to make permanent some of the pandemic-era rules that enabled the remote online audio-visual witnessing of wills

Quinidine-Catalysed Enantioselective Synthesis of 6- and 4-Trifluoromethyl-Substituted Dihydropyrans

The authors thank the Royal Society for a University Research Fellowship (ADS) and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), ERC Grant Agreement No. 279850 (KK), the authors also thank the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility at Swansea University.The cinchona alkaloid-catalysed enantioselective formal [4+2] cycloaddition of ethyl 2,3-butadienoate with a range of 1,1,1-trifluoro- and 4,4,4-trifluorobutenones is investigated for the preparation of stereodefined 6- and 4-trifluoromethyl-substituted dihydropyrans. Quinidine proved to be the optimal catalyst, generating the desired products in up to 98 % ee and 81 % yield. Stereo- and chemoselective derivatization of the dihydropyrans through hydrogenation is explored.PostprintPeer reviewe

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean Version 2 (IBCSO v2)

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is a region that is key to a range of climatic and oceanographic processes with worldwide effects, and is characterised by high biological productivity and biodiversity. Since 2013, the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) has represented the most comprehensive compilation of bathymetry for the Southern Ocean south of 60°S. Recently, the IBCSO Project has combined its efforts with the Nippon Foundation – GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project supporting the goal of mapping the world’s oceans by 2030. New datasets initiated a second version of IBCSO (IBCSO v2). This version extends to 50°S (covering approximately 2.4 times the area of seafloor of the previous version) including the gateways of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic circumpolar frontal systems. Due to increased (multibeam) data coverage, IBCSO v2 significantly improves the overall representation of the Southern Ocean seafloor and resolves many submarine landforms in more detail. This makes IBCSO v2 the most authoritative seafloor map of the area south of 50°S