OFTEN IN CHINESE TRADITION, THERE ARE WAYS BUT NO WILLS
Cultural taboos about death stymie estate planning
Only 1% of China’s 220 million seniors have drawn up inheritance plans. Writing a will is akin to putting a curse on yourself.
BEIJING The world’s most populous nation has the second-largest economy, one of the highest savings rates and mushrooming wealth. Yet virtually no one has a will to pass on an estate. And it’s become a huge problem.
Thirty years after communist China embarked on a course that allowed individuals to accumulate wealth, members of the first generation to benefit are starting to die, creating a spike in inheritance disputes that clog up the courts and turn families against each other.
The problem has gotten so bad that even the ruling Communist Party is concerned.
“When people die without a will, their children scramble for their property, damaging family ties and having a negative effect on society,” the state-run Xinhua News Agency warned.
Only 1% of China’s 220 million seniors have drawn up inheritance plans. One reason is cultural: Talking about death is taboo, and writing a will is akin to putting a curse on yourself.
Even the rich and educated often don’t write them. Consider the case of Yan Jiying, a coal baron from the northern province of Shanxi. He died in 2015 at the age of 71, leaving his estranged wife, mistress and six children to fight over his assets.
The conflict got so bad that his company, Sanjia, stopped paying wages.
“China is entering a crucial period. If we don’t find a way to transfer wealth responsibly, it will affect social stability,” said Hu Xingdou, an economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
To remedy the problem, the government called on authorities around the country to establish free legal centers for those older than 60. One charity doing that since 2013 is the China Will Registration Center, founded by Chen Kai, a lawyer with a passion to protect seniors. His offices in Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Nanjing have processed 40,000 wills at no charge and is the largest provider of probate services in China.
The waiting list for appointments at his first Beijing center stretches into September, proof that people will write a will if they can find support they trust, Chen said. “We want to teach old people that they are the masters of their fortune, ” he said.
On a recent morning, about a dozen seniors were squeezed around a communal table at the center, transcribing the final copies of their wills. They begin by dictating their wishes to a lawyer, who types up a draft. The clients are evaluated by a visiting psychiatrist to establish clarity of mind, they record video of their wishes in the presence of two independent witnesses and copy the final document by hand.
For many, the last step is the hardest. Transcribing a page of formal Chinese characters mistake-free is not easy. Yet Chen is adamant that they do it this way, saying he has seen too many badly written wills challenged.
According to a recent article in the People’s Daily, 70% of inheri- tance cases in Beijing courts stem from the lack of a will.
In the cases in which a will is challenged, 60% are found to be invalid.
At the will registration center in Beijing, many said they had come after discussing their wishes with family members. Liu Maolin, 74, said he had decided to write a will because he wanted to be sure his daughter, who cares for him, gets his apartment, instead of his son, a businessman who lives in Japan. He conceded there is always a risk of a later dispute.
“I didn’t want them to end up like the people on television,” he said. “This way, they can’t argue after I am gone.”