SINGAPORE – Many TV dramas often give the wrong impression that wills are best kept secret and revealed only when the head of the family dies.
Scriptwriters weave in the suspense because in most of these stories, the plotting and the killing usually start after aggrieved family members find out they have been disinherited or that the chairmanship of the company has gone to someone else.
Unless you also run a dangerous business empire that could spark the murder of your beneficiaries in a will dispute, it is prudent for families to have frank discussions about wills, as many High Court cases show.
Take these three cases. All could have had far more amicable outcomes if the beneficiaries knew earlier how their relatives’ plans would affect them.
Hardship wills
Imagine leaving a will that does not benefit any relatives, but instead creates unreasonable hardship for them.
An elderly woman’s will stated that her brother could not sell her $4 million condominium unit for three years, even though she had a mounting debt of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To make things worse, she directed the 84-year-old brother, who lives overseas, to use the sale proceeds after the three-year ban to set up a trust fund in her name to promote religious activities.
Indeed, the brother was told to form a “management committee” with other relatives to invest and grow her money so that the fund would have more capital.
But before this could be done, the brother was in a bind because the prohibition clause prevented him from even selling the property to settle the mounting debt. If the banks did not foreclose and sell the condo, a large chunk of the estate would have been wasted on paying the high interests that
