As I sit at my computer, on day 29 of operating the law practice remotely, I hope that our extended family of clients, associates and their loved ones are making it OK through these uniquely trying times. I know, though, that not everyone is. People are dying. Judges I've appeared before have passed awat after contracting covid-19. Court personnel I see on a regular basis have fallen ill. But I know we will get through this.

I've been thinking about wills. I've revised my own. Do you have one? You should. No matter what degree of wealth you have, it is worth preserving on your own terms - not the government's terms. A will is one way to do that, either by itself or together with other estate planning tools such as trusts.

Wills must be witnessed in a specific way in order to be valid. Before the pandemic, we would gather a client, three witnesses and a notary together in our conference room for this purpose. That's impossible now, and may be difficult to pull off for some time even after we are allowed to re-open our office. Social distancing is here to stay for some time to come.

People still need wills, however. Fortunately, there is a solution. A temporary amendment to state law allows documents to be notarized remotely. You can sign a will or other document in one location while the notary is in another room, another city, or anywhere else on the planet. We can notarize documents - temporarily - using video conference technology. You don't need anything more than a smartphone at each end - and almost everyone has one of those.

What about the witnesses? Fortunately, the law concerning the witnessing of wills needed no temporary amendment. The answer is built right into section 3-2.1 of the Estates, Powers and Trusts law of New York State.The key is that the witnesses don't actually have to see you sign the will. They can, if everyone is in on a video conference. But even absent a video conference, you can send each witness a copy of your will - signed by you - and then get each witness on the phone and declare to them that the document they are holding is your will, signed by you, intended by you to be your last will and testament. Each witness can then sign their witness affidavit and send it back to us - your attorney - and now you have a valid will that meets the formal requirements of the law.

So stay healthy, stay six feet or more away from everyone in public - but think about your will - unless you're OK with the government telling you who gets your stuff in the end.

FEMA has now officially declared NY State a major disaster area. This opens the propsect of emergency aid to New York businesses from the US Small Business Administration. Read the SBA press release and fact sheet here. 

Apply for assistance here: www.sba.gov/disaster

The trend of every empty space in Brooklyn being built upon continues. 324 Macon Street, between Marcus Garvey and Lewis, once upon a time was one of a row of historic brownstones. The block is part of the Bedford-Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights landmark district. The building, built around 1889, was torn down around 1967.

Plans have been filed to build on the empty lot. Unlike many parts of Brooklyn where there is no landmark protection, here the project must actually fit in architecturally with the surrounding properties. That's good news for this historic block and the residents in the neighborhod.

Justice takes a long time. Swift justice is an oxymoron. We have become as accustomed to this truism as we have to traffic jams on the Long Island Expressway at two o'clock in the morning.

Sometimes the sloth-like pace of justice is the result of lawyers delaying things. Not always, but sometimes. Other times the culprit might be a judge who takes too long to render a decision, or a clerk's office that loses critical documents. I see all of that, every month.

Sometimes, however, it's not the fault of the court system or those of us connected to it. Sometimes it's family.

I was in Surrogate's Court this morning on a simple probate matter. A woman was smart enough to prepare a will before she died. It was a simple will. Nothing fancy. She left her stuff to a handful of relatives - but not all the relatives who would have benefited if she had no will.

So now we had relatives who felt no incentive to cooperate with the process, because, after all, what was in it for them? Must be nice to have family like that.

We had to deliver a "citation" to one of those relatives. A citation in a Surrogate's Court probate proceeding is simply formal notice that if you want to object to the will, or you have a problem with the executor, you must come to court at 9:30 in the morning on a date stated in the citation. If you don't show up, the court assumes you are OK with the proceeding moving ahead.

Court rules required that the citation be delivered in-hand. We sent a sheriff's deputy to the relative's home. He wouldn't open the door. Three times the deputy went, and three times he was rebuffed.

So now, thanks to this loving relative, the rest of the family must wait even longer for the decedent's simple will to be probated, and the family must spend more money to get a court order allowing service of the citation by alternate means.

Not my idea of family values.