The carte blanche to end business blues

He retrieved the card from his wal­let and gave it an appre­ci­at­ive look. Gaz­ing at it, he smiled as he recalled how this small card had been big in bring­ing sig­ni­fic­ant changes for him and fam­ily. The card that earned the grat­it­ude and admir­a­tion of Towkay Tan – as he is known to his work­ers and cus­tom­ers of his hard­ware shop – is a cus­tody card that he received for the safe keep­ing of his Will in a Will cus­tody centre. Tan never ima­gined that this cus­tody card had made such a huge dif­fer­ence for him. He had been at wits’ end try­ing both hard and soft approaches in get­ting his two lazy sons to buck up and take a greater interest in the fam­ily busi­ness.

He had wiel­ded the big stick. Rep­rim­anded them. Cajoled them. Even resor­ted to incentiv­ising them, but all to no avail. There had been many a day when even three to four hours after the hard­ware shop had opened its doors and cus­tom­ers had already streamed in and out, his two sons were nowhere to be seen. Even they were in the shop, they would more often than not be chat­ting on the phone, play­ing games on their smart phone or PC – just doing everything else other than attend­ing to cus­tom­ers and mind­ing the busi­ness.

But of late, they had just trans­formed. They turned up earlier and earlier and just the date before, Son No.2 opened the doors for busi­ness, something he had not done in a very long time.They were show­ing more interest in the busi­ness. Son No.1 also con­sul­ted him and bounced ideas off him on how to grow the busi­ness fur­ther. This trans­form­a­tion came about after he gathered his fam­ily mem­bers around and showed them the cus­tody card. Cas­u­ally, he told them that he has writ­ten his will and kept them in a will cus­tody centre. The card will allow him to retrieve it any­time to re-write his will. He expressed the wish that when he is not around the busi­ness would con­tinue as it had kept the fam­ily going for three dec­ades. He also cas­u­ally remarked that he would change the inher­it­ance dis­tri­bu­tion pro­por­tions and leave more for the one who con­trib­uted towards build­ing the fam­ily busi­ness and less to the one who con­tin­ued to be indif­fer­ent.

The inten­tion was to let the fam­ily mem­bers know where his Will was kept. His spur-of-the-moment remark on review­ing his estate plan was unplanned. But it cre­ated the impact and brought about the changes he had so much wanted. Tan learnt that after show­ing the cus­tody card, he had the unex­pec­ted help from his daugh­ters-in-law. They had been nag­ging their hus­bands and get­ting them to leave the house early and pay greater atten­tion to the busi­ness. Tan did the right thing in inform­ing fam­ily mem­bers where his will is kept and in also entrust­ing its safe keep­ing with a ded­ic­ated cus­tody centre.

Hid­ing a will to keep it away from pry­ing eyes and not telling any­one where it is kept is as good as not hav­ing a will if it can­not be found after one passes on. Keep­ing a will in a cus­tody centre not only ensures that the con­tents are kept away from pry­ing eyes; it ensures that it can only be retrieved by per­son author­ised by the test­ator. It is also not just safe­keep­ing from unau­thor­ised per­sons and tam­per­ing but safe­keep­ing from the rav­ages of expos­ure.