We need to know what make up our Asset before putting an Estate Plan in place (identification of assets). What is an Asset?
An Asset is the resources with economic value that an individual owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide a future benefit. For such Asset to be used for Estate Planning, the person must have title/ownership/right to it (You don’t give what you don’t have – memo dat quod non habet). There are various type of assets depending on the individuals (Whether as employee or business owner).
For instance, an employee who is still under employment have the following assets which most people are not aware of (called liquid Asset) Pension contributions, Gratuity, Cooperative contribution, National Housing Fund (NHF), National Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), Life Insurance Policy (Minimum of 3 times total emoluments by Pencom Act),Bank Accounts, Cash in Banks, investment in Treasury Bills/fixed deposits etc. Please Note, the Law that set up the NHF give you the right to access Mortgage after contributing for minimum period of five (5) years. However, if the person did not access Morgage through the NHF during their working life, he/she is entitled to get back the total contribution plus 10% interest on their contributions on retirement. If the person died without collecting the benefits, their family is meant to claim their portion from the authority. How many of us knows this. The same applies to the NSITF contributions. It is meant to give you a social health Insurance cover as a contributor but on retirement without accessing Health Insurance, the contributor is expected to claim his/her contributions with interest on retirement Or his/her loved ones claimed this if the person died without collecting the benefits (most employees see this as the usual tax payment to the government). With this, can any employee still believe they don’t have any assets to put in place an Estate Plan. The listed asset are cash assets that Estate Planning can help us track and accessed for the benefit of our loved ones.
The second type is the Physical Assets which most of us are farmilia with such as Land, houses, cars, gadgets, gold, silver, diamond, other precious metals etc. The third part relates to our investments in shares/stocks, Mutual Funds, Bonds, Derivatives, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecon etc and lastly are Intellectual Property, Royalties, Inventions, Music’s, Debtors, goods paid for but not collected, Partnership, Joint Accounts, etc. Follows us on the Journey as we look at the impact of Culture and Traditions when there is no Estate Plan in place (when person dies intestate) in part 4…