Estate Beneficiary Management

You can name beneficiaries in your Will or Trust Deed. For Muslims it will follow the Wasiat per the Faraid distribution or a Trust Deed.

If there is no Will nor Trust Deeds, then the estate is intestate and the beneficiaries are decided by the Government following the Distribution Act of Malaysia and other laws in Sabah and Sarawak.

If its a Will, then the beneficiary or related parties will have full access to the information in the Will. It will become public record on death of the Testator (person who created the Will).

If its a Trust, the information is controlled by the Trustees per the instructions of the Trust Deed. The Trust is fully confidential, unless the courts, within a relevant law, instruct parts of the Trust Deed to be made known to a plaintiff requesting for the information.

The beneficiary will get the balance, of whatever is stated and instructed in the Will, after the deceased’s liabilities are paid off by the Estate Administrator.

A residual estate beneficiary is the persons or entity listed in the Will to receive items that are not listed in the Will.

This is a clause in the Will called the Residual Estate Clause. This clause will state how and to whom items not listed in the Will (the residual estate) is to be distributed.

If this is not done, then the residual estate will be treated as intestate and distributed by the government per the Distribution Act. Proper estate planning and will writing is required to ensure your estate is distributed according to your wishes and not by other people or the government.

The beneficiary will get whatever you intended, per the instructions you wrote in the Trust Deed.

A Trust can hold the assets of an estate. You can transfer legal ownership of desired parts of your estate into the Trust. These assets then are no longer part of your estate and belongs to the Trust, of which you created and will instruct, but owned by the Trustees.

And instruct by way of the Trust Deed, how to distribute and who to distribute to. The Trust is created before death. This includes partnerships and shareholding Trusts too.

Rockwills Buy Sell Trust

The Estate Administrator of the Will or Trustee of the Trust will notify the named beneficiaries.

Beneficiaries can be overjoyed or depressed depending on the situation and distribution amounts.

Beneficiaries can be overjoyed, like striking the lottery and may go a spending spree. This can be controlled however with a Private Trust and the wealth can be kept for a longer time, earning income for the beneficiary instead.

Beneficiaries can be depressed, feeling unfair treatment by the deceased. This can be avoided with a Private Trust, and the distribution amounts and who the beneficiaries are, are kept confidential within the Trust Deed.

Beneficiaries can be known publicly when the Estate is distributed by an Administrator. This is the case with a Will and also without a Will.

Quarrels and disputes can arise if the beneficiary feels an unfair distribution of the estate. Additionally, the in-laws, distant relatives, mistress, ex-wife, ex-husband and business partners can get involved with legal challenges, especially over land, partnerships or deemed vested interests.

Other parties can come and want to buy up parts of the estate. If the beneficiary has no emotional attachment to a house, heirloom, jewelry or art piece, the beneficiary may just sell it off to get the cash. A Trust can control this from happening.

A Trust ensures that relevant parts of the Estate can be distributed to your beneficiaries according to your wishes. The Trust becomes the owner of those parts of the Estate. And the Trust manages this according to your instructions as written in the Trust Deed.

And since the Trust Deed is a confidential and private document, no one outside of the Trustees knows who gets what and how much from that particular part of the Estate.

This also bypasses the distribution laws, as the instructions and ownership transfer before death. And Beneficiaries will know what they get and it will not be public knowledge.

• You need the help of a Professional Estate Planner.
• The estate planner needs to have a team of people who can support the different types of Estate complexity.
• This estate support team should include specialist lawyers, accountants, tax and finance and company secretaries.
• Rockwills franchisees are professional estate planners, with in-depth training in estate planning, Rockwills estate planning processes and support services.