By Piason Maringwa
Death has been and continues to be one of the most frightening phenomenon to both people and animals since time immemorial.
Very few people are comfortable talking about death let alone preparing for it .There is a kind of finality associated with death which makes talking about it a big discomfort. Churches have unsuccessfully tried and are still trying to sanitize death as something good to look forward to.
The coming in of more and more formal funeral providers has made preparing for death much easier than ever before and a lot more people find comfort in taking up funeral policies. The biggest challenge for many Zimbabweans is writing a “Will”.
A “Will” from a layman’s definition is a document written by a living person detailing how one wants one’s estate or assets should to be distributed when one dies .Due to superstition many African people in Zimbabwe have died interstate that is without writing a will. A lot of African Zimbabweans do not want to write wills for fear of being killed by their spouses or children especially step children. A lot of survivors of deceased estates have lost valuable property because of the unavailability of proper “wills” documenting how the deceased estates should be distributed.
Writing “Wills” has many advantages for many people both HIV+ or not. A “will” guarantees proper management of a deceased estate and minimizes unnecessary disputes within the families of deceased persons and their surviving relatives .
I am reminded of a family of a deceased medical practitioner which lost all their property to marauding relatives of their late father because there was no will. The medical practitioner had died of an HIV related illness and had not made a “Will”. Meanwhile, the widow had no marriage certificate and as if that was not enough had no children with the deceased. The relatives made sure that the widow got nothing except her kitchen utensils. There are lots of similar cases where families lost out their deceased estates because of the unavailability of properly drawn wills.
In the past when HIV/AIDs was the preserve of the economically well to do deceased estates of AIDS victims were relatively rich and attracted the attention of greedy relatives who benefited from the unavailability of wills to deep their grubby hands into the deceased properties of their relatives at the expense of their real beneficiaries. Among other reasons people don’t write “Wills” is they think that they still have lots of life to go through and hence will write their “Wills” towards the end of their lives and do we know when that is?
During graveside speeches at funerals speaker after speaker talks about how good the deceased had been and no one including local councillors says anything about encouraging people to write “Wills”. Councillors especially in rural areas should help people understand the importance of allowing widows and widowers to remain with their deceased partners’ estates even where there is no “Will” so as to safeguard the welfare of those remaining.
The government through its various structures should teach people the importance of writing and how to write “Wills” so that deceased estates are distributed fairly and the right people benefit. This idea of assuming that everyone knows what should be done and how “Wills” are written is very bad. People should be taught at various forum on how to go about writing “Wills”. A lot of people including the well to do don’t know how to write “Wills” and a deliberate effort should be made to teach people how to write “Wills”. Writing ‘Wills’ should be done even at school level so that school children grow up knowing the importance of writing wills.
A lot of people think that a will should only be written by people with big properties yet everyone even those with very few possessions should also write wills to guide survivors on how to distribute their little wealth as it were.
