Lineage/Writing/Succession planning
Guide
Most people, in most countries, have no plan.
Sixty-eight per cent of American adults have never made a will. In the UK it is fifty-six per cent. In India, around seventy. This is not a national failing — it is the human default, and the consequences are the same wherever you live.
The shape of the problem
The law is local. The failure is universal.
Inheritance law differs enormously between countries, and the differences matter. But the reasons families actually get hurt barely differ at all: nothing was written down, nobody could find the assets, a designation contradicted a will, or one person held every thread.
Fix those four and you have solved most of it, in any jurisdiction, before a lawyer is involved.
Due to pass to heirs over the next two decades — mostly from families with no documented plan.
Cerulli ↗The thing people get wrong
The paperwork isn’t what takes the time.
It is widely assumed the courts are the bottleneck. In England and Wales that is no longer true: across 242,821 probate applications in 2025, the mean time from application to grant was five weeks, and the median two.
The months that actually disappear come earlier and nobody measures them — working out what the person owned, which institutions held it, and where the proof is. A complete asset register collapses that phase almost entirely.
And the holding nobody ever finds does not enter the estate at all. It becomes a line in a government register instead.
What to actually do
Six steps, in the order that matters.
This order is not arbitrary. A will that distributes assets nobody can find is a document that creates work rather than preventing it — which is why the register comes first, everywhere.
Build a complete asset register
Every account, holding, policy, property, pension and business interest, in every country, with the institution, the identifiers and where the proof lives. This is the foundation for everything below, and the step almost nobody completes.
- Include holdings in countries you no longer live in — these are lost most often
- Include pensions from former employers, which nothing will chase on your behalf
- Record liabilities too: debts are settled from the estate before anything is distributed
Make a valid will — in each jurisdiction that needs one
Formal requirements differ, but witnesses who are not beneficiaries is close to universal. If you hold assets in more than one country, take advice before assuming a single will covers them all: some jurisdictions recognise a foreign will, others require a local one, and a badly drafted second will can revoke the first.
Check every beneficiary designation
Retirement accounts, insurance policies, bank nominations and payable-on-death registrations frequently pass outside the will and override it. An ex-spouse named on a policy in 2009 will generally still receive it, whatever the will says. Confirm the name on each matches your identity documents exactly.
Tell your family
The hardest step, and the one that decides whether any of the others work. If you are the only person who knows the adviser, the banker and the location of the documents, you are a single point of failure. A plan nobody knows exists is not a plan.
Plan for incapacity, not only death
A power of attorney, lasting or enduring depending on the jurisdiction, plus healthcare directives where they apply. Incapacity is statistically the likelier event and the one families are least prepared for.
Review it on a schedule
After a marriage, divorce, birth, death, property purchase, move between countries, or change in the law. At minimum every two years. Circumstances drift much faster than documents do.
Common failure modes
Six ways plans fail, in every country.
Each is ordinary and each is fixable in an afternoon — if somebody tells you it applies to you. That is exactly what the governance checks are for.
No will at all
Intestacy rules then decide, and they rarely match what the family would have chosen. In most systems an unmarried partner receives nothing whatsoever.
Assuming a nomination equals inheritance
In many systems the nominee is a custodian who must hand the asset to the legal heirs. In others the designation overrides the will entirely. Both assumptions cause disputes.
Designations that contradict the will
Beneficiary forms and written instructions drift apart over decades, and almost no system shows a family both at the same time.
Forgetting assets held abroad
Property, accounts and pensions in a country you left. Frequently invisible to the executor, and subject to a second legal system nobody consulted.
Digital assets with no route in
Crypto, online-only accounts, and the email address that holds every recovery link. Invisible, and often permanently unrecoverable without the credentials.
A single point of failure
One person knows where everything is. If that person is unavailable, so is the entire estate — at exactly the moment nobody can ask them.
How the law differs
Where the local detail actually bites.
A rough orientation, not advice. The point is to show how differently the same family situation resolves depending on where the assets sit — and why holding assets in two systems needs deliberate planning rather than hope.
| Jurisdiction | Testamentary freedom | What families most often get wrong |
|---|---|---|
| India | Broad for self-acquired property; restricted for ancestral and coparcenary property. | Assuming a nominee inherits. The nominee is generally a custodian for the legal heirs. |
| England & Wales | Broad, but subject to family provision claims by dependants. | Marriage historically revoked an existing will; unmarried partners inherit nothing on intestacy. |
| United States | Broad, state by state, with spousal elective shares in most states. | Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and policies override the will completely. |
| Civil-law Europe | Restricted — forced heirship reserves a fixed share for children and spouse. | Assuming a will can disinherit a child. In many of these systems it simply cannot. |
| Islamic personal law | Typically one third may be willed; the remainder follows prescribed shares. | Attempting to distribute the whole estate by will rather than using lifetime gifts. |
| Assets in two systems | Depends on domicile, situs and any applicable treaty. | One will assumed to cover everything — or a second will that silently revokes the first. |
Region in detail
India: which statute governs your family.
India applies different succession law depending on community, and the distinction between ancestral and self-acquired property sits underneath all of it. This is the level of local depth every jurisdiction we open gets.
Hindu Succession Act, 1956 (amended 2005)
Governs succession for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs.
- Class I heirs have first right: spouse, children — sons and daughters equally since the 2005 amendment — and mother.
- Ancestral property: daughters hold equal coparcenary rights, confirmed in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020).
- Self-acquired property may be willed freely. Without a will it passes under the intestate rules.
- HUF property: partition rules apply; the Karta has management rights, not ownership.
Indian Succession Act, 1925
Applies to Christians and Parsis, and governs wills for every community.
- Testamentary succession gives complete freedom to distribute property.
- Intestate succession follows specific distribution rules per community.
- Registering a will is optional, costs a few hundred rupees, and makes it materially harder to challenge.
Muslim Personal Law (Shariat Application Act, 1937)
- Only one third of the estate may be willed (wasiyat); the remainder follows Shariat inheritance shares.
- Prescribed shares apply for spouse, children, parents and extended family.
- Hiba — a gift made during your lifetime — is a commonly used planning tool.
The most expensive single misunderstanding in Indian personal finance remains the difference between a nominee and a legal heir. The detailed explainer.
When to get help
Where doing it yourself stops being sensible.
Bring in a professional if any of these describe your family. Not because the six steps change, but because the cost of getting one detail wrong scales with what is at stake.
Verified accountants, estate planners and legal professionals can work inside your family’s picture under scoped, time-bound access. You keep the keys.
Cross-border holdings add a second set of rules on top of all of these. How that works →
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Succession law is jurisdiction-specific and changes; take advice on your own position before acting.
Sources
- Pew Research Center, Experiences with estate planning and discussing end-of-life preferences , November 2025. 32% of US adults have made a will. Survey of 8,750 adults, September 2025.
- Money and Pensions Service (UK), Over half of UK adults don’t have a will , 2025.
- Cerulli Associates, Cerulli anticipates $124 trillion in wealth will transfer through 2048 , December 2024. Estimates across research houses vary widely; some put the figure far lower. Treated here as "$100 trillion and up".
- UK Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly: October to December 2025 , 2025. 242,821 probate applications in 2025; mean 5 weeks from application to grant, median 2 weeks.
- National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, What is unclaimed property? . US state treasurers hold roughly $70bn belonging to an estimated 1 in 7 Americans. About 5% is claimed each year.
- Reserve Bank of India / IEPF Authority, Unclaimed deposits and the Investor Education and Protection Fund . Combined unclaimed deposits, shares, dividends and insurance in India exceed ₹78,000 crore across RBI, IEPF, IRDAI, AMFI and EPFO disclosures.
Step one is an asset register.
Everything else in this guide depends on it. Bring in what you already have and start there.