BEIJING: A 19-year-old Chinese student recently made a will bequeathing his personal wealth of 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) to his childhood friend, sparking heated discussion online.
The teenager from Shanghai, surnamed Li, recently set up a notarised will to bequeath the property under his name, including a flat and savings of millions of yuan, to his childhood friend.
Li claimed that his parents had divorced and remarried, and gave him the property he now owned.
They did not spend much time with him, and so Li felt distant to them.
Li said he was an extreme sports enthusiast and he often put his life at risk.
If anything were to happen to him, he did not want his parents’ spouses, whom he saw as merely strangers, to inherit his property.
He would rather name his childhood friend, whom he trusts and grew up with, as his successor.
According to China’s Law of Succession, a person’s spouse, children and parents are first in line in the right to inheritance.
This means that if Li’s parents inherited his property, their spouses would also enjoy the right to use or inherit it in the future.
The law also allows a person to make a will to donate their personal property to the state or a collective, or bequeath it to people other than statutory successors.
Li went to the China Will Registration Centre’s office in Shanghai to notarise his will.
According to office manager Huang Haibo, Li’s childhood friend needs to legally accept the will within 60 days, otherwise they would be seen as forfeiting the right to inherit.
The China Will Registration Centre is a non-profit public welfare project launched in 2013 by the China Ageing Development Foundation.
According to the centre’s recently published annual report, over 400,000 wills have been registered with them.
They noted an increasing acceptance of making wills among the public. The average age of testators had come down from 77 to 67.
Huang also noted a rising trend among youths to set up wills. “An increasing number of people born in the 1980s, 90s and after 2000 have set up wills with us. Making wills is no longer a taboo, or just for the elderly.”
A notary from eastern China’s Zhejiang province, surnamed Chen, told Ningbo Evening News that young Chinese people typically set up wills when they got married, to secure any real estate bought or inherited before the marriage.
Another common scenario was single and childless people making wills to bequeath their property.
Li’s choice sparked heated debate online.
One said: “He felt distant to his parents but they still gave him 20 million yuan. I don’t see any problems in his parents inheriting his property.”
“Maybe he’ll change his mind in the future. He is still too young to make such a big decision,” said another.
“I wish I had a friend like this,” said a third. - South China Morning Post
