Thursday, February 08, 2007

Making a Will

Yesterday, my company organised a lunchtime talk to understand more about "Making a Will". It is most advantageous to make a will before you die, as there's a lot of law kicking in if you don't, and basically, when there is a lot of law involved, there is paperwork and unnecessary money which you would not have otherwise spent if you had made a will.

I never knew quite a lot of the things he mentioned during the talk - eg. if a couple dies simultaneously (eg. freak accident), and the time of death for each person cannot be determined, it is assumed that the older one (the one born earlier) dies first, and as a result, the estate of the older person passes on to his spouse, and this has further implications on how the estate is split among his/her parents, children......etc etc. Complicated, to say the least. The lawyer who made the presentation gave several real-life examples of what he had handled in the past, and how those cases impacted the people involved.

The moral of the story is, make sure you have a will made out by a lawyer before you die. It saves a lot of time, money and inconvenience later for the dependants, and also, gives more piece of mind. The cost of making a will - anything from S$300 onwards...depending on the complexity of the estate.

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