White paper on wills in China released

A total of 82,177 senior citizens aged 60 and above in China have written and stored their wills at nonprofit organization China Will Registration Center between 2013 and 2017, according to the center's white paper which was released on Wednesday.

One of the main findings in the white paper is that there has been a sharp decline in the average age of testators, from 77.43 to 72.09 years old.

The paper also indicated that 39,234 wills, or 47.74 percent, were made by elderly people from single-child families. Those from families with two or three children made up 43.18 percent of the total.

"It used to be common knowledge that wills could prevent the contesting of property among children," said Chen Kai, director of the management committee at the China Will Registration Center. "But now, more people from single-child families are realizing that these wills can also help to prevent the loss of family property when an elderly member dies unexpectedly."

The report shows that 33.53 percent of the wills were made with the aim of preventing family disputes. Meanwhile, 30.94 percent of testators wrote wills because they wanted to simplify inheritance procedures.

"Through a professional registration system that utilizes technology to perform facial recognition and the scanning of identity cards and fingerprints, wills stored in the center can be used to reduce the time required for property inheritance following a death in the family," said Chen.

Data also shows that the number of elderly people who prefer not to let their children know about their wills – so as to prevent disputes from arising – have risen from 21.28 percent in 2013 to 38.31 percent in 2017.

Launched in Beijing in 2013, the China Will Registration Center provides free consultations, registration and custodial services to local senior citizens aged 60 and above. Its sixth branch was opened in Shanghai in November and has since received more than 500 wills.

"We found that one in two wills submitted to the courts is not legally binding in China, and this is caused by various reasons like lack of signatures or unclear signing dates," said Huang Haibo, director of the Shanghai branch of China Will Registration Center.

"As such, we decided to set up this center to provide professional services to help the elderly in this process."

Apart from helping people store their wills, the center also has a service that allows clients to leave behind cards bearing their final words for their loved ones.

According to official figures, the number of senior citizens aged 60 and above in Shanghai reached 4.57 million as of December, accounting for 31.6 percent of the city’s total population.