Things to keep in mind while drafting a will

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Feroze Azeez, Anand Rathi Private Wealth Management spoke on what to keep in mind while drafting a will and how important it is to have it.

Also Read: Guarantor to loan? What responsibility you have to shoulder Below is the verbatim transcript of Azeez's interview with CNBC-TV18. Q: What are the points to be kept in mind while drafting a will? And how important is it to have the will registered? A: Will is an important concept which should be a part of everybody's plan. Coming to drafting a will, there are quite a few points which need to be kept in mind. I will briefly touch upon six-seven of those: (1) An important thing for a person while drafting a will is to make sure -- when he has his investments, the nominees and the joint holders gets synchronised completely with the will. One cannot have dispersion in what he has in the will and the nominees and the joint holder to avoid confusion in the future. (2) The person should keep in mind that if the beneficiaries are children or minors or even elderly dependents, there should be an executor which needs to be appointed without fail if the dependents are minors or the beneficiaries are elderly dependence. Therefore, who can be an executor? An executor could be a family friend, could be a relative or some of the trustee companies act as executors. So, having an executor is critical. (3) Legatees are nothing but the beneficiaries of the will should never sign as the witness. There are two witnesses which are required in a while. The person should make sure that none of the beneficiaries act as a witness because that creates conflict in future. (4) There is another technical concept called codicil, which is nothing but an addendum to a will. After a person makes a will there is addition in assets and liabilities due to which there will be a change which would be required in the will as time progresses. It is very critical that a person does changes and does the entire will again rather than passing addendums on it. So, this is an important thing to take care of. (5) The person should not use ambiguous language. He should use very specific language when it comes to defining his assets. I have seen some wills where people have ended up using a very broad terms like movable assets and that has created a lot of confusion after the demise of the individual whose will has been there. Therefore, use specific language especially while describing assets like instead of using moveable property, use the specific names like car etc and be very specific while listing down assets. (6) Understanding whether a probate would be required. What is probate? Probate is nothing but a concept where a court certifies whether this is the last and the final will of the person who has made it, for example if there is immovable property in the will which is in Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai, the probate will be mandatory. So, understanding whether his will to get executed, will it require a probate is very critical. If the will is of a person who is a Parsi or follows Christianity then a probate is mandatory. So, understanding whether probate is required is also an important thing to keep in mind. (7) If a person is an non-resident Indian (NRI) and making a will then try and make two wills for domestic assets and offshore assets, that creates less confusion because I have seen will when its time for execution has created a lot of problem if there is a single will for an NRI. So these are few important points which one should keep in mind and a person should do a will, come what may.