WILLS AND ESTATE PLANNING

5 Important Things You Need To Know About Your Will

1. Only an original Will is valid

2. Your appointment of a friend/family member as Executor may be declined by the Master of the court. It is always advised to appoint a professional.

3. Your Will deals with Life Cover that pays to your estate only and not with life cover benefits that pays directly to beneficiaries. Always make sure that beneficiaries on your life cover policies compliments your Will.

4. If you do not include a testamentary trust clause in your Will, minor children's inheritances will go to the Government Guardian's Fund (also see disadvantages of dying without a will point no. 4)

5. Guardian nominations are only applicable when there are no surviving biological or legally appointed parents.

6. Always have 2 copies of your Will signed - one for your Executor's safe keeping and one for your safe keeping.

Advantages of Having a Will

1. Protects the inheritance of children under 18;

2. Children's inheritance avoid the Government Guardian's Fund and are preserved in their own trust for their own benefit and according to your wishes.

3. Ensures that all your wishes are carried out.

4. You can save on estate duty.

5. Inheritance are precluded from subsequent marital contracts - you can exclude a spouse of a beneficiary from any matrimonial claim on the inheritance.

6. Having a well drafted Will in place will speed up the administration process and limit any potential disputes and conflicts.

Disadvantages of dying without a Will

If a person dies without a Will his/her estate will be dealt with in terms of the Intestate Succession Act. Some of the disadvantages of dying intestate are as follow:

1. The court could appoint someone you do not approve of to be your executor and/or trustee and/or guardian(s). The appointment of an executor may also take a long time and could lead to further hardship for dependants.

2. Your estate will be dealt with according to rigid and inflexible laws.

3. If you have no immediate or close family, distant relatives - rather than close friends or a life partner - will claim the inheritance.

4. Your minor children's inheritance might suffer, since anything they are entitled to receive, will have to be transferred to the Guardian's Fund in a monetary form, where it will remain until they turn 18. This potentially means that the family home would have to be sold, which is quite possibly something you would never have chosen to happen!

Separate Wills for separate countries

Nowadays the trend is to invest worldwide. That means that many individuals have assets in more than one country. However, courts have only jurisdiction in its own country and can only enforce a Will as far as it affects assets in that particular country. Therefore, in practice it is advisable to draw up a separate will for each country where the testator has assets.

Signature and witnesses

In South Africa a Will is only valid if the testator has signed it together with two witnesses. The signatures of the witnesses mean that they confirm that it was the testator who has signed the Will. Each page of the Will must be signed and the signatures must be directly below the last writing in the Will. Due to other stipulations in the Wills Act it is also recommended never to use a person as a witness if his/her name appears in the Will, either directly or by implication.