For over 40 years, Attorney James Riley has been serving clients in the Rockland County area with estate planning, elder law, and litigation needs. Over the years, his legal work has been based on a deep and sincere desire to help people and has developed a broad range of legal expertise including litigation, municipal and education law, small business planning and real estate. In a recent letter to the New York Times, James stresses the importance of executing wills, estates and health care proxies especially now during the Coronavirus pandemic.
To the Editor:
“Doctors Are Writing Their Wills,” by Bari Weiss (Sunday Review, March 29), raises the important point that personal wills are so essential. Among other objectives that wills accomplish, and perhaps the most important, is the naming of guardians for our young children: who will do the parenting and safeguarding of assets if parents die prematurely. The fact that physicians are now seeking to name multiple substitute guardians — more backups than usual — is most telling.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has established an executive order that allows documents to be notarized remotely by video means. Competent estate-planning lawyers are now using this method to accomplish the proper execution of wills without the need for a meeting between lawyer and client.
Wills or codicils, which are amendments to existing wills, can now be signed in New York, and hopefully in many other states, without the need for an in-person meeting with a lawyer. This is a very good thing.
James K. Riley
Pearl River, N.Y.
The writer is a lawyer and certified financial planner.
Read the original letter here.