Wills For True Heroes

By Linda Bobrin, Esquire

Wills for Heroes returned to Bucks County on Saturday, June 24th. The program started after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when a small group of lawyers, looking for a way to help their local fire department in Columbia, South Carolina, realized there was a real need for estate planning services for first responders. Since 2001, the Wills for Heroes programs have grown in several states around the country.

Attorneys and bar associations across the United States have requested assistance with implementing the Wills for Heroes programs in their communities. It became a project of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division in 2007 and 2008.

Despite the inherently dangerous nature of the job of first responders, an overwhelmingly large number of them do not even have simple wills. First responders selflessly devote their lives to serving their communities and are prepared to and often do pay the ultimate price in the line of duty. The relatively low number of first responders who have wills also speaks to the selflessness of first responders; the very nature of their profession is to think of others first, to put the good of the community before themselves. Avoiding the thought of ‘what happens if I die’ is, for many first responders, an occupational necessity.

Since the pandemic the Pennsylvania Bar Association has been bringing the Wills for Heroes program back to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in partnership with Philadelphia-based law firm Ballard Spahr LLC and now, I’m happy to say, to Bucks County, through the Register of Wills and Clerk of the Orphans’ Court, Linda Bobrin. We successfully held our first event at the Newtown Township Municipal Building on June 24th and we are in the process of planning our next event for the fall of 2023, likely at the Bucks County Bar Association Building in Doylestown.

Wills for Heroes provides free basic estate planning documents to a variety of heroes, including police, fire, emergency medical personnel, other first responders, military veterans, and the essential personnel we celebrated during the pandemic. Wills for Heroes provides those on the front lines protecting our personal safety with the tools they need to prepare adequately for the future.

During our June event we prepared 39 wills for our local heroes during the course of the day with the help of approximately 20 local attorney volunteers. We also had 3 volunteer notaries and 2 law students as well as 2 volunteer witnesses and 2 college students helping with registration. We were fortunate to have our partners, David Trevaskis, Esquire, from the Pennsylvania Bar Association as well as Carolyn Capobianco from Ballard Spahr LLC, both experienced Wills for Heroes veterans, to handle any problems or issues.

Anyone interested in volunteering for a future event can email Register of Wills Linda Bobrin at lbobrin@ buckscounty.org. In addition to providing a valuable service to our heroes, attorneys who participate receive 2 CLE credits at the beginning of the event, 1 substantive and 1 ethics. 

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