This startup writes your will and checks if you’re alive

Image credit: El Payo

I was Keeping Up with the Kardashians one day (don’t judge – I was on vacation) and in one episode the mom, Kris Jenner, got obsessed with death and funeral planning.

She went on a tour of mausoleums hoping to find one the family might eventually house their tombs in. The rest of the Kardashians thought she was nuts.

Maybe Kris is the sane one here. For younger folks, death is a distant and unpleasant concept that’s best ignored – life is nasty as is.

But as you age, loved ones die, and your health deteriorates. As they say in sports, Father Time always wins. So if you can’t delay the inevitable, why not make it more bearable for your loved ones? LegacyNest, a startup from Singapore, wants to do precisely that.

In essence, it promises to write your will for you, at a fraction of the cost of getting a lawyer or professional will writer. Simply list down your assets and how they’ll be distributed, press a button, and out comes the document, phrased in legalese vetted by a law firm.

I spoke to co-founder and CEO Cesare Tagliaferri, who just left his job as a quant at ANZ bank to work on this, about what sparked the idea. “A friend was telling me that one of his relatives passed away unexpectedly, and one year after, the distribution of assets didn’t start,” he said.

The delay happened because the relative didn’t name an executor for the will. (An executor is someone who distributes the assets on the deceased’s behalf.)

Cesare pointed out that things can get ugly. A recent high-profile example was Prince, who died without leaving a will. His siblings are now battling in court over his estate, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions.

Only for the rich?

Image credit: Wikimedia

But most of us aren’t Prince. Many people in Singapore will be lucky to have a million dollars in assets when they die. Wouldn’t existing inheritance laws be sufficient to divide assets?

Cesare doesn’t think so. There are about US$109 million in unclaimed assets in Singapore, a lot of it held by the government on behalf of “beneficiaries of deceased estates,” reported The Straits Times. So that’s the first hint that things can be improved.

He gave a few scenarios. A lawyer friend told him about a father whose son, a Singaporean, divorced his wife because she cheated. Unfortunately, he died before the divorce proceedings were completed, and as such the ex-wife became the sole beneficiary of all his assets.

Expanding the market

Will consumers bite?