I would bet that’s what the whole thing hinges upon. Paper wills can be notarized, they’re widely accepted, and there’s not so much room for interpretation or disputation - I can totally see people arguing that someone didn’t really mean something, because they winked, or their eye twitched, or they weren’t smiling, or whatever. Printed documents have none of that ambiguity- just words on the page.
Plus, they tend to lend themselves to a more coherent communication of what people want- in a video will they can get up there and ramble, contradict themselves, and so forth, which is harder, but not impossible to do with a printed will.
It doesn’t have to be handwritten by the person at all. It’s ridiculously common to have lawyers draw up wills, and you just sign them in the presence of a notary. This also isn’t uncommon in the situation where people have the mental capacity but not the physical capacity to write it out.
I think the thing is verifiability. They’ll likely compare a holographic will to samples of that person’s handwriting to verify that it’s their handwriting- they don’t want someone’s kid writing a “will” when the parent doesn’t have capacity, and getting them to sign it, nor do they want someone writing one after the fact and then just forging a signature. At least with a printed will, signature, and notary, you’ve got some checks and balances that this person did indeed sign the will themselves under no obvious duress, etc… Or if it’s handwritten, they’ve got something they can compare to for verification.
Wills don’t have to be terribly complicated, but there are some conventions that the law recognizes that might be overlooked with a video will. Saying, “I want to divide all my assets equally to my three children” sounds fine on a video, but what if one dies before you? Give the other two equal shares? Give the dead child’s share to their spouse? Their children? A good will covers all expected or unexpected contingencies. That’s better suited for a document than a video.
Same and I’m not even really a Trekkie but still looked it up. The holodeck must refer to holograms, 3 dimensional drawings or renderings. Whatever happened to those anyway? I sometimes see them used for authentication labels like on sports clothes or genuine copies of media. 'Member the National Geographic cover with the skull fossil?
in pre-deep-fake video times, yes … today - not so much … tomorrow - possibly a paid service to make pretty much perfect fake vid’s (for entertainment purposes, only )
Just hire the guy who reads sode effects in medical commercials to fill in the fine print. So you. Say “I want to divide all my assets equally between my three children” and then the voice pops up to deliver all the gory details in 30 seconds of rushed speech over video of you playing with the grandkids in slow motion.
The law has long ago decided this. That’s why the legal term is “per stirpes” meaning that if the person has died, their heir(s) get their share, or “per capita” for only those still alive. Technical details like this are a good reason why the average Joe/Josephine should consult a lawyer if they’re talking about serious bucks. It’s not the only pitfall. (I.e. if you never formally adopted your wife’s child from a previous marriage, then no matter how much you’ve been a father to him/her for all their life, they don’t inherit unless specifically named. Same- if you leave it to “my favourite nephew” you should name them explicitly - if your brother had a child long ago he never told anyone about, legal wrangling may ensue. and so on…).
I believe (IANAL) that the distinction from old common law was that a typed will (or written by another person) required witnesses (i.e. verification of the signature by two someones who do not benefit from the will) whereas a handwritten will should indicate the person obviously wrote it themselves based on handwriting verification. Obviously various jurisdictions have changes requirements over the years. There was a time when the average person with enough money to need a will left plenty of examples of their handwriting lying around.
I hadn’t considered the possibility of deep fakes, but it shows why even with a video will - if it were to be acceptable - one would need those two witnesses again, who watch the whole will being videotaped, to verify the content is the true expression of the person making their will.
There are other risks with paper, like fragility (see any 19th century book printed on acid-included paper.), fire, floods, etc.
But adequately stored, paper lasts a long time and doesn’t need a tech device to read it.
In England, legal historians can consult original legal documents (wills, contracts, deeds, court records) that are centuries old. There may be issues of language and hand-writing, but the paper is there.
(The only tech device needed to read old languages and hand-writing is the researcher’s brain, which can be trained for those archaic issues. )
Since I’ve been practising law, I’ve seen documents saved on little tape cassettes; on Wang discs; on big IBM floppy discs; on mini-floppy discs; on CDs-rewritable. All cutting edge tech at the time.
If I ever have to pull any of those old files from long-term storage because I need to consult them, there had better be a paper copy in the file along with those cutting-edge storage devices. If not, I’m screwed.
Now that I think about it, we didn’t even call them « cassettes » They were « wafers », about the length of my thumb, and they were proprietary - only worked on the computer they came with. No inter-operability between different platforms.
I remember reading an article some years ago that said that some of CBC’s original programs from the 1960s still existed, but on their original storage medium, and at the date of the article they only had two of the original devices that could play them. If those broke, that would be it for replaying those old bits of CBC history.
Hope as time passed, they found a way to re-record them to a more current medium.
One controversy in England at the moment is a proposal from the Ministry of Justice that, in order to save on storage costs, wills should be kept only as digital copies. Historians and genealogists are up in arms because, as everyone has pointed out, the original paper documents are much more likely to last longer than any electronic version.
I suppose the advantage of today’s digital storage is that it is easy to copy. An amusing waste of time is to try and find the earliest dated file you still have. (I have a few from the 1990’s). And it seems that formats today have staying power - WAV and MP3 files are ubiquitous, even though I remember them from the mid-90’s. Somewhere I probably still have the data CD full of music a consultant gave us when we first encountered MP3’s. (Music publishers were particularly incensed that MP3’s became popular before they could make them protected). JPG, same thing. Videos are a bit more interesting, there are always odd codecs that “won’t play”. But a format becomes popular, everyone uses it, then it becomes harder for others to change it.
(Unless you’re Apple and make photos default to HEIC, and people you send them to complain their software won;t open them…)
But there’s also the concern that more proprietary formats (Wordperfect?) will become harder to read over time - not that they will be impossible, but that the format information will be lost. I imagine a time when the debate could be over what punctuation and spacing was intended in an obscure format of a legal document, where such details could be important.
It’s already annoying to search the web for tech help on an issue, only to encounter a decade or two of instructions and advice that changes drastically depending on when the item was posted (undated) and what version of the product it refers to.
This is also an important point. Commas, semi-colons, periods and paragraph spacing can be important guides to the interpretation of a written document. If the formatting in a document changes over time, that make it more difficult to interpret. You want a stable document, not dependent on tech; that means paper.
No, because doing that might make it more difficult to investigate an allegation that it’s been altered. What if the fraudster makes an altered copy, then laminates? Unlaminating might destroy the copy, so it’s not possible to investigate.
The law has decided this for people who die intestate. It doesn’t say what happens for people who die with a will that doesn’t make provision for predeceased children.
If they have a real will, with the help of a lawyer, it will spell this out, hopefully (if the lawyer is competent) using those terms - plus any other interesting ambiguities, plus preventing disallowed provisions. (IIRC in some jurisdictions the widow(er) cannot be kicked out of the family home, either they get the house or a lifetime tenancy)
If the person wrote their own will without benefit of legal help, without careful consideration of the issues involved, then expect an interesting fight.
Old joke:
“He died intestate.”
“Oooh! Sounds painful!”
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