A new mobile app released in July aims to help younger investors develop wills and trusts without having to work with an attorney or advisor.
Sixty percent of Americans don't have a will, a percentage that increases among younger people, Dave Hanley, CEO of Tomorrow, said referring to a study by Caring.com. "Seventy-eight percent of millennials don't have a will – the primary parents of young children in America do not have a guardian set up for their kids or a plan in place if anything happens," he said.
When it comes to trusts, Hanley said many young people believe they don't have enough assets to justify taking that step.
He calls Tomorrow, "the first trust fund for everyone. Anyone can come in and create a trust or will completely for free and it takes just minutes to do."
Tomorrow creates revocable living trusts and wills for individuals and prompts them to begin discussions with the people who would best serve as executors, trustees or guardians for their children.
When users sign up, the Tomorrow app pulls information from their phone to populate fields with personal information like phone numbers or birthdays, as well as entering information about their families.
They can set contacts as a guardian, executor or trustee, and the app will generate a text or email the user can send to that person. A series of short videos explains basic terminology and introduces users to the principles of creating a trust or will.
"We're hoping to create a conversation around these types of decisions instead of them happening alone," Josh Heckathorn, vice president of financial services and co-founder of Tomorrow, said. "If you work with an estate planning attorney, you might sit down with an attorney and make decisions around guardianship, and someone's name ends up in a legal document and maybe you never even had a conversation with them."
