Three things you need to maximise the impact of your will

Many of our clients have told us they found the best way to complete their Will was to maintain momentum. This means allocating time to the process and completing as much as possible each time you log on.

The beauty of the 1Life Will and Estate Plan is that we provide your financial adviser with a series of intuitive questionnaires to help make this process as painless as possible. The system then generates the Will for you automatically.

With that said, there are three important things you need to prepare beforehand to help you complete the Will quickly and efficiently.

1. Create a comprehensive list of all your assets:

To make sure the right people receive the right assets, and avoid any potential conflict, spend some time listing your assets as comprehensively as possible. This will allow you to be very specific when you decide how these assets need to be distributed.

You might also want to leave some of your assets to a charity or non-profit organisation and so again, you will need to be specific.

You also want to make sure you list all your assets, including policies so nothing is left out of your estate. Right now, there is more than seventeen billion Rand in unclaimed unit trusts and policies in South Africa.

2. Spend time thinking about whom you want your beneficiaries to be and what you want to leave them:

Be clear on who you want your beneficiaries to be, and what you would like to leave them. This is particularly important if these beneficiaries are not blood relatives. Often the courts will find in favour of children over a common-law partner.

Unless indicated otherwise, a previous spouse can also have rights to the estate. There is a recent example of an ex-wife receiving a property even though the deceased had verbally expressed that his daughter received it, but it was not stated in the Will.

3. Consider the legal implications.

There are other legal implications you also need to consider when drawing up your Will.

• What special requests you want to make such as how to manage your funeral, organ donation, etcetera.
• If you are parents, you would need to consider who you want to nominate as guardians, and whether you should set up a testamentary trust to look after your children and assist the guardians.
• You also want to decide if you want to appoint an alternate executor. This person will work with the executor when they need assistance.

By having this information available when filling in the questionnaires, you will be able to speed up completing your Will and make sure your estate is distributed according to your wishes.

Read more here or contact your financial adviser.