From today's NYT --
December 13, 2001
ESTATE PLANNING
Jolted by Sept. 11, Many Rush to Make Wills
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Ellen and Mark Genender showed up at their lawyer's office in Manhattan at 9:15 a.m. Friday to complete a task they had begun more than a year ago, but could never quite bring themselves to finish. They signed their wills and put their affairs in order.
For Mr. and Mrs. Genender, a couple in their 30's who live with their three children on the Upper East Side, that hour at their lawyer's office was the uneasy, and possibly inevitable moment familiar to trust and estate lawyers everywhere: an implicit, if grudging, acknowledgment of mortality.
And in the three months since the attack on the World Trade Center, it has taken place across New York, and to a lesser extent the nation, at a brisk and unabating pace.
If there is any business that is booming since Sept. 11, it is the business of writing wills. Starting about 10 days after the collapse of the towers, and continuing ever since, trust and estate law firms say, they have been overwhelmed with requests from people who suddenly want to prepare their wills. A specialty of law once noted for its procrastinating clients and mordant put-the-client-at-ease jokes has suddenly become serious and urgent.
Many of the requests are from people like Mr. and Mrs. Genender, affluent families with children — though Mr. Genender, a partner in a private equity firm, has the added prods of working on the 59th floor of a Midtown office tower and flying often on business.
But estate lawyers say the influx is astonishing for its breadth as well as its volume: from people of all ages and economic classes, from married and gay couples and singles, from people with children and without, and from all neighborhoods. (People who work or live near the trade center site, though, have shown a particular eagerness to prepare a will, said Anita S. Rosenbloom, an estate lawyer at the downtown office of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan.)
In the normally sleepy business of writing wills, it is now not uncommon to hear of a three-week wait to get an appointment with a lawyer, or to get the first draft of a will back.
"We've been incredibly busy," said Barry S. Berger, an estate and trust lawyer with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. "There has been a tremendous upsurge in people who are first beginning to think about their estate planning, and there has been an inordinate number of our clients who have been sitting with will drafts, who have now seen a new sense of urgency in bringing their wills and planning up to date." Gloria S. Neuwirth, of Davidson, Dawson & Clark, who drew up the will for the Genender family, described a heightened sense of urgency: "It's `I want to get my affairs in order. I want to make sure my children are protected. Let's get this over.' "
This change in the tempo and tenor of the process — best known for the awkward dance in which lawyers nudge clients into considering the improbable event of their own demise — suggests a fundamental change in the way many people have come to think about their lives. Suddenly, the notion of dying at an early age — before one's parents, and with children still growing up at home — is not an irrational fear, but the kind of reality that long ago became familiar to people living in places like Jerusalem or Beirut.
For people like Mr. and Mrs. Genender, a project that was started and then forgotten in the day-to-day bustle of raising a family in New York suddenly became critical. Mrs. Genender, who is 34, said: "After everything that happened, and after having three small kids, we decided it was time to do something. Time to sign it."
Mr. Genender, who is 37, said: "We were dragging our feet on getting it finished. The 11th made me realize that you're more vulnerable than you thought. And you can't control the circumstances."
The phenomenon is not confined to the city where the attack took place. Dennis I. Belcher, the chairman- elect of the American Bar Association's section on real property, probate and trust law, who is based in Richmond, Va., said lawyers across the country had reported an upsurge in requests for wills. The wave was accelerated by the rush of anthrax scares and a series of terrorism alerts from the Justice Department.
Still, not surprisingly, the interest in estate planning is most intense in New York, where so many people are reminded of their vulnerability by the changed skyline, the still occasionally pungent smell of smoke in the downtown air, the debris trucks rolling along the Hudson River, the daily obituaries with photographs of young and vibrant people, and, of course, the patch of downtown that remains a barricaded crime scene.
"It puts things in perspective," said David C. Levine, 35, a tax accountant who lives in Chelsea, Manhattan, and who sat down with his lawyer on Monday to tend to his will. Mr. Levine had a particularly persistent reminder: his office was on the 13th floor of 7 World Trade Center, with a view of the north tower. He emerged from the subway station at Cortlandt Street just after the first plane struck that tower.
"I realized it was time to put things in order," he said.
The events of September have, it seems, changed the atmosphere that surrounds the preparation of a will. Lawyers say it is hardly uncommon for a client to expect that a will be done overnight. "I've gotten calls from someone who was delaying, saying, `Could you come over right now and talk about my will,' " Ms. Rosenbloom said. Lawyers say there has been an epidemic of what are darkly known in the trade as "runway wills" — overnight wills sought by people who learn of a major plane crash just before they are to fly.
Even though lawyers usually try to move things along with a bit of Addams family humor, the atmosphere at law firms these days does not lend itself to levity. "It's really hard to keep it light in this environment," said Judith E. Turkel, a Manhattan lawyer. "People come in with emotions running very high, with tremendous fear, and with the realization that they could die in a way they didn't realize before."
There are other factors that lawyers point to in explaining the rush. In a manner reminiscent of how people responded when AIDS was diagnosed in the early years of the epidemic, before there were effective treatments, "sometimes people feel they are gaining some control by putting their affairs in order for their loved ones," Ms. Rosenbloom said.
Joshua S. Rubenstein, who oversees an estate department of 24 lawyers at Rosenman & Colin, said his firm's business had more than doubled over the last three months. "Sept. 11 took away the ability to do what people do when they come in to talk about wills, which is to say, `Here's what I'd like to do if I die' — as if they have a choice," Mr. Rubenstein said. "Now it's not if but when."
A number of lawyers suggested that the very nature of the attack meant that the rush in estate planning was not about to fade. Since so many of the victims were so young, it is just a matter of time until their estates wind up in court, the subject of litigation and confusion over the intentions of men and women who never expected to die without a wil
Sent 12/12/2001 21:49:18 PST by summer