Minnesota Star Tribune
Where there's no will, there's now a way to throw a party - March 1, 2007

By Kara McGuire, Star Tribune

The party was in full swing at Tony and Sarah Beth Seguin's Woodbury home on a recent Thursday night. As children ran about or created works of art at the dining room table, their parents stood around the kitchen island, with their wills in hand. You read that right. Wills, not wine.

Welcome to a will-signing party, more useful than a Tupperware party and more productive than a book club.

Massachusetts-based lawyer James Haroutunian started Willparties.com last year.

Every time the father of two would get together with other parents of young kids, they'd bring up their lack of a will and their need to give him a call. "I'm the death of the party," he jokes.

But the calls would never come, and he'd hear the same excuses over and over: No time. But his wife and her friends had time for other home-based sales parties for wine, jewelry and food. So the will party idea was born.

He has conducted 15 to 20 of the events, which work best for families who have simple situations, he says.

Haroutunian will suggest to families who have more complex scenarios to set up an appointment in his office. He hopes to have a network of lawyers partying in all 50 states.

When asked what he thought about the idea, Robert McLeod, an estate planning attorney with Lindquist and Vennum, said that "the stuffed-shirt response would be, 'That's not the way we handle our attorney-client relationships.'" But he believes the concept creatively addresses a key problem that all estate planning attorneys face — getting clients to start a will and to finish it.

His only concern is that, in front of friends and neighbors, families might not reveal family secrets that should be addressed. It's tough enough to discuss them in a lawyer's office.

"Getting out of the attorney's office made it an experience that was much more interactive," said Staven Bruce, who attended the event with his wife, Karen, and their three kids. "You do get the discount, but you also get [the group's] perspective," he said. Plus, he figures, if you have to talk death, you might as well do it with friends: "It adds a certain amount of levity."