I wrote my Will 20 years
ago, a little after marriage - Utomi
By Gilbert Ekezie
Saturday, March 29,
2008
It is out of ignorance that many Nigerians think that writing
their wills means fast-tracking their death. It is also the
uninformed that feels it should be when one is some meters
away from his grave that he should put his intentions on how
he wants his estate managed after him into writing.
This issue of wills and when to write them and the trouble
that could be saved by an understanding of it featured promienently
in a seminar recently.
The forum was organized at the behest of an NGO that enlightens
on the importance of will especially in saving widows and
fatherless children the embarrassment they pass through in
the hands of family members at the demise of the head of the
family.
During the enlightenment forum, prominent economist and politician,
Prof. Pat Utomi, dropped a bombshell that writing one;s will
would not affect life span. He said he wrote his own over
20 years ago, just a little after he married and had his first
car. As a result, he must have been updating it as time went
by and things changed. But he used the instance to make people
know that Will is not like a poison that kills.
It does not kill
In a lecture organised by Centre for Values in Leadership
(CVL) in Lagos recently for widows with the theme “The
hope of the widows in our world today”, founder of the
organization, Prof. Pat Utomi, said improper writing of wills
and mindset behind it compound the problem of widows in our
world today. He said men need to be educated on the issue
of writing wills, so as to save widows from some of the hardships
they pass through.
“There should be proper education for men. Nigerian
men don’t write because of the fear that they will die
after that. I wrote a Will few weeks after I got married,
when all I possessed was one car. That was successful till
I got more than one car and other property. Therefore, men
have to realize that writing a Will does not mean death.
Over 20 years since I wrote the first will, I am still alive.
So we have to develop the discipline of writing Wills that
will help to protect our families a little.”
How to… write successful Will
Also on the modalities of writing successful will, Utomi advised
men to be more open to their wives. “Men should please
be more open to their wives. Some of us have this fear that
if our wives know what we have, they will kill us” ,
he stated.
Widows have faced humiliations, intimidations and castigations
in the hands of their brothers or parents-in-law, probably
because they wanted to control the property of their late
husbands. However, it is agonising that some families do not
adhere to the directives of wills after the writer had died.
Professor Utomi described such insinuations as unwise and
foolish because no reasonable woman may want to kill her husband,
hoping to shoulder family problems alone, when it is difficult
for two of them to carry.
“You see, with husband and wife carrying the load, it
is heavy enough and the woman must be the most foolish person
to want to carry the load alone, by trying to kill her husband”,
he expressed.
Utomi was however of the view that if men really have in mind
that their children should have quality training, they must
prepare for them now by setting up Special Purpose Vehicle
(SPV) that is owned by the man, his wife and children. And
that all family assets should be in the vehicle, so that if
something happens to the man, nobody can take anything illegally,
because everything now belongs to the company, which has the
man, his wife and children as signatories. |
