Is a Will Enough to Pass on Your Legacy?

We all know that writing Wills is essential. It ensures that inheritance issues don’t crop up after you die. It helps you ensure distribution of your estate according to your desire and also aids you in planning out tax efficient structures for the future.

But are your assets only confined to the money you made, the real estate you bought and shares you invested in?

Your life, your learnings, the ideas and values that made you, YOU- aren’t they valuable, hard-earned assets too?  Will you let them die out with your last breath or would you like to pass on the story of your life and make it a lasting legacy beyond money and real-estate?

If you think of that too, then Ethical Wills are the answer.

Ethical Wills help you leave behind your learnings, values and more for your survivors and future generations. Plus, they don’t need to go through any complicated laws, dense statutes and inviolable guidelines.  They add a broader perspective to your legal Will.

Ethical Wills And Their Myriad Uses:

Many family elders think hard of ways to pass on the family legacy- a legacy that is made up of beliefs and ideals enshrined in their personal stories of triumph and failure. With Ethical Wills you can pass on your personal story, belief, and ideals for the future generations. That’s not all…

In fact, people have also used the Ethical Wills concept to leave behind property that has no monetary value but is priceless nevertheless- from family recipes to old photographs and items of personal use that hold value as tokens of love.

As estate planners, we at WillEffect know that property disputes are not always about money. We have seen a family break up after the matriarch’s death because one of the sisters took the mother’s old saris as she said her ‘mother wanted her to have them’. This is regardless of the fact that an estate worth tens of crores was amicably distributed between the two sisters. The old saris created a breaking point from which there was no return.

In such scenarios too, Ethical Wills help. They can help families navigate the tricky issues of emotions and can stop family tensions from escalating by explaining intentions behind the division of property as made in the Will and passing on emotionally charged articles.

So in an Ethical Will you can share-

• ·         Your values
• ·         The trials and tribulations you faced and how you overcame them
• ·         Why you decided to divide your estate in the specific way stated in your last Will
• ·         Traditions and beliefs that you hold dear
• ·         Old photos, recipes, old family travel DVDs and personal items- with instructions on which family member gets to keep what and why

How to start:

An Ethical Will is not a legal document and so it has no pre-set format. You can write it as a diary, a letter, a power point presentation, a collage, an audio message- anything will do. The point here is to get your message across.

As many of us find writing things down more difficult than speaking them out, maybe these guidelines will help you get started.

1.       Write down your thoughts

        Start jotting down the things you want to share. It could be how you started your business or how you met your wife or how you went through a crisis. Your life experience can give much-needed guidance to your family.

Over time as you keep writing down your thoughts you will realize certain ideas/ideals/values stand out from the rest. Expound on them and keep writing. This is the story of your life you will find things to say. Later you can crystallize the whole thing in bullet points or a letter.

As a starting point you can use these ideas

i.      The things you have loved doing

ii.      Your best memories

iii.      The thoughts that held you back/ pushed you forward

iv.      What you wish for those whom you leave behind

2.       Make use of resources

There are many free and paid templates and ideas available online. We have collected a few of them for you in this article. You can see this ethical wills worksheet, try this workbook for ideas or fill in this template. If you want something deeper, try books.

Remember your Ethical Will is your love letter to your dear ones. Make it stand out with your emotions and your thoughts. It has to be 100% you.

One more thing, an Ethical Will is not necessarily written late in your life. If you like the idea of creating a legacy document you can do it anytime and keep adding to it as you grow with each experience. Of course, writing an Ethical Will does not mean that you can do away with your legal Will. It only goes a step further than a legal Will as it reveals the thoughts and intentions of the writer and many a times have been relied on by courts to adjudicate on disputes arising from the legal Will. At the same time, an Ethical Will cannot be a substitute for a poorly drafted will. At WillEffect we know the advantages of a well-documented Will for a grieving family.

To conclude, whether your Ethical will is written as a legacy letter explaining the divisions in the Will, or to only share your vision for the future and your memories of the past, or even just to document the traditions you would love your family to follow – in every way an Ethical Will adds to your Last Will. And the best thing is that you can start writing it today… without any help!