The Plainspeak / Family

A belief · pairs with the Peace of Mind guide

Will your money be orphaned?

When you are gone, your family cannot claim money they never knew you had, or that the law will not clearly hand them.

By 37xBetter · a banker's view

As of the last public figures, well over fifty thousand crore rupees sat unclaimed across Indian banks, insurers and mutual funds, and the pile only grows. That is not abandoned money. It is money whose owners died or forgot, and whose families could never reach it.

It happens for three plain reasons. The family did not know the accounts existed, because no one kept a record. Or there was no nomination, and claiming without one is so cumbersome that grieving families give up. Or there was no Will, so the courts must decide the legal heirs under succession law, a process that drags on for years and often splits the family while it waits.

Fixing it takes an afternoon, not a lawyer. Keep one written record of what you own and where, and make sure your family knows it exists and where to find it. Put a nomination on every account, and review it when life changes, a marriage, a birth, a death. And write a Will.

The Will matters more than people think, because a nomination is widely misunderstood. A nominee is only a caretaker. The law lets the nominee receive the money, but they must pass it to the legal heirs; the nominee does not automatically own it. The Will is what actually decides who gets what. Where you can, make the nominee and the heir the same person, so the two can never be set against each other.

None of this is for you. It is the last kindness you do for the people you leave behind: that your absence does not also orphan your money.

A nominee is a caretaker, not an heir. Only a Will decides who gets your money.