Since the beginning of the pandemic, the volume of individuals seeking estate planning solutions, especially online, has more than doubled as the realization of the impact of the COVID-19 has come to a head, Trust & Will, an online estate planning platform, reported Thursday.
Researchers analyzed data from nearly 20,000 individuals aged 25 to 40 who reported creating wills or trusts in 2020. Seventeen percent of them cited the pandemic as the reason.
"We saw a huge increase in the number of millennials completing wills last year, which is a positive trend considering that more than 60% of adult Americans do not have a will in place," Cody Barbo, founder and chief executive of Trust & Will, said in a statement.
"We decided to study the millennial audience specifically to see how the unrest we experienced in 2020 acted as a trigger for younger audiences to consider their end-of-life and estate planning."
Thirty-eight percent of survey participants said they created an estate plan after the birth of a child, and 13% did so as part of general life planning.
The study found that millennials care deeply about their pets and charitable causes. Three in four pet owners in the cohort appointed a guardian for their pets.
