Money Talks Podcast: Legacy planning - Draw up wills and nominations to avoid ugly disputes later
Consider leaving your assets to causes you care about after you’re gone, especially if your loved ones are already financially secure, says our guest.
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Legacy planning affects everyone and being open about it can prevent a great deal of pain in the long run.
From being transparent about inheritance among family members to clearing debts, Lionel Wong, associate director of finexis advisory, shares tips on how to conduct your legacy planning smoothly.
Here's an excerpt from the podcast:
Lionel Wong:
Drafting the will is easy, but legacy planning ... can take months. Partly, it's also because most clients find it very difficult to think about this ... They will get stuck. It's such a difficult question to answer, like, how am I going to distribute this to my children?
Andrea Heng:
Yeah, what's fair?
Lionel:
Or whether should my children even need so much? If they don't need so much, where is this all going (to)? So if this is too complicated a question to answer, what (Singaporeans) do is they just put it under the pillow. Months later, (I'll ask) "Mr Tan, have you thought about the question I asked you?"
"Give me some time," and then they will chuck (it under) a pillow.
Most people will really start thinking about (legacy planning) probably in their seventies and eighties, which might not be such an optimal time to do so at that age.
Andrea:
At what point in my life should I start thinking about drawing up my legacy plan? Obviously, if you're saying that doing it in your seventies and eighties, when you are facing your mortality, that's when things start to get really urgent, right? But if that's not the case and that's not recommended, what do you recommend?
Lionel:
Having a plan or discussing a plan doesn't mean you have to do something about it. So I'll say that to start thinking about it and to have a discussion about it with a professional ... the minute you are married.
Andrea:
Because you are introducing a new family member to the household.
Lionel:
Yes, especially if you want to take care of your spouse. So (it's easy) when a person who is single. If (an) accident happens, everything goes to the parents. But when a spouse comes in, we ... start thinking about how (to) take care of (our) spouse. I have clients who told me that they thought if anything happens, they will just pass all their money to the spouse to handle and the spouse will take care of the parents for him.
But the spouse told him during a discussion with me, that she rather not hold the money meant for the parents to prevent any misunderstandings, even though they are on very good terms now.
Editor's Note: This episode of Money Talks has been edited to remove an incorrect reference by our guest to CPF monies when there is no nomination. CPF funds are paid to the Public Trustee's Office for distribution to family members. We apologise for the error.
