President's Corner | September 2021

Dear Fellow BEPC Members,

I am honored to serve as the 91st President of the Boston Estate Planning Council. This feature is the first in what will be a quarterly series of “President’s Corner” articles provided in the monthly BEPC Beacon. Please look to this column for updates on BEPC news and initiatives.

We in leadership are incredibly excited to begin the busy fall season of programming. We have worked tirelessly since the spring with our amazing committees and management team, McKenna Management, to schedule and produce a variety of dynamic, engaging, and relevant events for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, at the same time, we have entered a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic with the Delta variant. For some people, this has brought up mixed feelings regarding BEPC having in-person events in the near future.  We are working through these challenges. We will continue to monitor the CDC guidelines and government regulations. Our upcoming schedule offers a mix of modalities for our events, with in-person, virtual, and hybrid options available.

In addition to facing these unique challenges with our programming, BEPC continues to move forward on several other long-term initiatives. One such initiative is to raise BEPC’s profile by offering community facing programs and serving as a leader in matters that benefit the overall community. Two committees are actively engaged in efforts to advance this initiative. With the guidance of BEPC’s Legislative Committee, the Council has asserted itself as a leader in the Massachusetts estate planning community. We have been in contact with Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth William Galvin, regarding the use of the electronic apostille (see the Council’s January 29, 2021 letter), in order to increase the efficiency of certain legal processes that affect estate planning. The Legislative Committee also continues to work on the ongoing effort to modernize the Massachusetts system regarding remote notarization as it relates to estate planning documents. Additionally, the BEPC Community Engagement Committee has initiated efforts to establish a program for BEPC members to work with inmates at local houses of corrections, teaching financial literacy. I thank those volunteers who are contributing their time to organize these efforts.

I hope you are as excited as I am about the fall and entering a new program year. I look forward to seeing you at one of our many upcoming events, hopefully in person, in the near future.

Warm Regards,

Steve M. Carr, President