Free estate planning service for first responders this year includes new group — healthcare workers

Nearly two decades ago, shortly after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, a lawyer in South Carolina came up with an idea for attorneys to help out the nation's police, firefighters and paramedics whose jobs place them in peril unexpectedly, with sometimes fatal results.

The idea was simple: attorneys volunteer their time one day a year to meet with and set up at no charge wills, estate plans, healthcare directives and power-of-attorney documents for first responders. It's the kind of life task that experts recommend families undertake, and few do.

With that, Wills for Heroes was born. The program has helped thousands of police and firefighters since, including many in San Diego through the San Diego County Bar Association, which is preparing to put on the event once again starting May 4.

This year, in a grim sign of the times amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the program is expanding to include another group of workers who are facing peril each day: healthcare workers.

Doctors, nurses, physician assistants, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, technicians, residents, interns and medical students — all can get their estate planning done for free by a volunteer attorney. The lawyers will spend between 30 minutes and an hour with each worker either via a conference call or video call, another concession to the pandemic.

The event will also run for more than one day because of the challenge of scheduling remote meetings among several different people. This year the event will go from May 4 through June 30, said Johanna Schiavoni, the president of the bar association.

She said the annual program's goal of providing a valuable service to emergency workers remains the same, and she acknowledged that the pandemic this year added a new class of workers who could benefit from the planning.

"It's a recognition of the everyday heroism and work of all our front line healthcare workers," she said.

The number of healthcare workers who have died after contracting the highly contagious COVID-19 disease from treating patients is not exactly known. Earlier in April the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that some 27 workers had died and 9,200 had been sickened, but the agency noted that was from a small sample of data nationwide and that the true number of deaths was likely higher.

To qualify for the free planning someone has to have an estate and net worth less than $500,000. Net worth is determined by the total value of a person's assets, including cash, personal property, savings, stocks, bonds, real estate equity, life insurance and retirement assets like a 401(k) or an IRA.

Schiavoni said 85 lawyers have volunteered to do estate planning this year, and while typically in past years the one-day event held at the bar center downtown helped between 70 and 80 people, this year's longer event with more lawyers will be able to help up to 500.

Workers who are eligible can sign up through June 30 by going to sdcba.org/wills-for-heroes-signup.

Paul Woodard, a lawyer in Scripps Ranch, has volunteered with the Wills for Heroes program since 2013. He said the first responders who are helped walk away with a great sense of relief. "These things are worked out, they have a plan in place, and are going to have their property transferred in the precise way they want," he said.

When the idea of including healthcare workers was first raised there was strong support from local attorneys.

"Not only are they (healthcare workers) trying to help these individuals get better, but they are risking their lives on a daily basis to help these individuals," Woodward said. "It is showing the implications of the virus and how real things have gotten as far as potential mortality, just by doing your job in a pandemic environment."

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