What After Me?
In your surroundings you will find many of your close relatives and friends who failed to plan “What after me” and that resulted into fighting within family or disputes in properties and loss of accumulated wealth. In India 99 out of 100 fail to write their will or fail to properly plan their finances and in case of sudden death the legal heirs suffer. Even you may find cases where person has been detected with terminal ill and had enough time to plan and write will but never did it. Indian wives are so much dependent on their husbands that they don’t even know how to write a cheque or withdraw cash forget about the lengthy legal formalities needed to claim the property or encash shares and mutual funds.
The other major problem with Indian adults is that many times they maintain secrecy with their life partner or don’t tell them under the pretext that she will not understand or don’t want to disclose how their property shall be divided among their children. Instead of fair and legal distribution, they believe in that who so ever will take care of them in their last days shall get major chunk but it so happens either last day comes unexpectedly or childrens behaviour change after they get married.
5 tips for planning about “what after me”:
1) Secure your partner legally and financially by clear will.
2) If either the wealth is complicated or family structure is complex, take proper legal expert help in writing the will.
3) If possible take all members in confidence and share the copy of will or appoint a good executioner.
4) If children are not interested in your business or living far off then better liquidate as much as possible.
5) Educate your spouse and share everything with her so that she can face the reality courageously.