A childhood friend's father passed on recently. It was sudden and unexpected, he died of a massive heart attack. About a year before he died, he went to a lawyer and drew up a will. He told my friend the details as she was his favorite daughter.
The sad part was that after his death, my friend could not locate the will. Either her father hid it so well that she could not find it or it had been destroyed by a sibling who was not in favor of the key clause in the will. She was very determined to find it, she spent every week end searching through every item in every room systematically through the 3,000 square feet house.
It was her father's wishes that she be given the opportunity to purchase his house from the other children by staggered payments through a few years. Until the will is located, the other siblings would probably apply for a letter of administration and have the house sold and the proceeds divided equally among the seven siblings.
From this true story, we can see that it is not just important to write a will; but it is equally important that it be kept in a safe place and the executor of the will be given access to it. Contrary to popular belief that a testator should keep his will in his safe deposit box, such a box would be frozen as soon as the death certificate is issued or the obituary appears in the local newspaper.
No comments:
Post a Comment