{"id":95644,"date":"2017-10-25T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techvibes.com\/?p=95644"},"modified":"2017-12-04T14:20:18","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T19:20:18","slug":"torontos-willful-wants-canadians-to-talk-about-death","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/magazine\/torontos-willful-wants-canadians-to-talk-about-death","title":{"rendered":"Toronto’s Willful Wants Canadians to Talk About Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Oulds\u00a0has confronted death twice and\u00a0that inspired him to launch\u00a0Willful<\/a>, an online platform that drafts legally-binding wills in less than 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

Lying in a hospital bed for seven days with septic arthritis in his ankle, Oulds said he had a lot of time to think about what would happen if he died.<\/p>\n

Years later, a ten-car accident had Oulds wrapping a tourniquet around a man\u2019s severed leg on the side of the road as he asked Oulds to pass along goodbye message to his family.<\/p>\n

The sudden passing of his uncle was the final push for Oulds to launch\u00a0the online will-generating platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to get people to talk about death. It\u2019s not something people want to do,\u201d said Oulds, the founder and CEO of Willful. \u201cPeople need to have the death talk. They put it off for so long and are forced to deal with it when someone unexpectedly passes away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Toronto-based company is targeting Canadians who don\u2019t have a will\u2014nearly 56 per cent, according to a LawPro study. Willful\u2019s digitally-created will circumvents the expensive and timely option of sitting down with lawyers to sort end-of-life arrangements, a barrier that has stopped many Canadians from setting up a will.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of Canadian adults don’t have a will, which leaves families unprepared in the case of a death, whether it\u2019s expected or not. We created Willful with families in mind, and designed it to be simple and straightforward so that planning for the future doesn\u2019t have to be a pain,\u201d said Oulds.<\/p>\n

Through conversations with people his age, Oulds realized that most young adults don\u2019t have wills, deterred by both the legal jargon and the high cost of lawyers.<\/p>\n

Willful developed a suite of products tapping three estate lawyers for guidance: wills (including living wills), power of attorney for personal care, and power of attorney for property. They start at $99 for one person, and up to $250 for a mirrored will for couples, and come with unlimited document edits.\u00a0Traditional wills can run Canadians anywhere from $300 to $1,200.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we launched, we realized we need to educate people too. They don\u2019t know where to start. We need to show them what to do, but it’s not as hard as people think,\u201d said Oulds.<\/p>\n

While Willful is currently only available to people living in Ontario, Oulds said he\u2019s looking to expand Willful to Alberta and British Columbia in early 2018.<\/p>\n

Willful isn\u2019t Oulds’ only company that tackles the uncomfortable topic of death. He launched Final Blueprint that guides Canadians through end-of-life planning in 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Oulds\u00a0has confronted death twice and\u00a0that inspired him to launch\u00a0Willful, an online platform that drafts legally-binding wills in less than 20 minutes. Lying in a hospital bed for seven days with septic arthritis in his ankle, Oulds said he had a lot of time to think about what would happen if he died. Years later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76241,"featured_media":95663,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1826,1825,1824,21,1823],"magazine-region":[],"magazine-series":[],"magazine-topic":[],"class_list":["post-95644","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-News","tag-final-blueprint","tag-kevin-oulds","tag-online-wills","tag-toronto","tag-willful"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/95644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/magazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/95644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/95663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95644"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-region?post=95644"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-series?post=95644"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=95644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}