As per Section 2(h) of Indian Succession Act, 1925 provides that Will means the legal declaration of the intention of a person with respect to his property, which he desires to take effect after his death. Will has been defined in Corpus Juris Secundum as A ‘Will’ is the legal declaration of a man’s intention, which he wills to be performed after his death, or an instrument by which a person makes a disposition of his property to take effect after his death. A will made by a Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain is governed by the provisions of the Indian Succession Act, 1925. However, Mohammedan are not governed by the Indian Succession Act, 1925 and they can dispose their property according to Muslim Law.

The various kinds of will are:

• Privileged will: Wills created by a testator being a soldier, an airman and a mariner at sea employed in an expedition or engaged in actual warfare are known as Privileged Wills.  Further, if such a soldier, airman or mariner has written instructions for the preparation of his Will, but has not died before it could be prepared and executed, the instructions shall be deemed to be his Will; and if such a person has, in the presence of two witnesses, given verbal instructions for the preparation of his Will, and such instructions have been reduced to writing in his lifetime, but he has died before the Will could be prepared and executed, then such instructions are to be considered to constitute his Will. Such testator may also make the Will by word of mouth by declaring his intention before two witnesses present at the same time, but such a Will shall become null at the expiration of one month after the testator, being still alive, has ceased to be entitled to make a privileged Will.

• Unprivileged Wills: Will created by a person who is not a soldier employed in an expedition or engaged in actual warfare or a mariner at sea is known as an unprivileged Will. These are the wills that need or require certain conditions to be fulfilled for the wills to be valid. These are the wills commonly made by the masses. The testator must sign the will, signature or mark of the testator or the signature of the person signing for the testator must be placed so that it appears that it was intended to give effect to the writing as Will. The two or more witnesses should attest to the will.

• Conditional Wills: Execution of these wills are dependent on happening of an event and if that event occurs in the future only then the will is to become effective. This means something other than the person who wrote the will’s death. This could be a future event not closely related to writing the will, such as attaining a certain age.

• Joint and Mutual Wills:  A joint will distributes the property of two or more people, usually a married couple. Joint wills determine what will happen to the couple’s property after one spouse dies, and also what will happen to the property after the second spouse dies. Mutual wills are two separate wills that are close mirrors of each other. Mutual wills are the kind of wills in which two people agree to formulate a will on the mutually agreed terms and conditions. The testator creates the other person as his/her legatee in these wills. Generally, married couples who have children from their first marriage create such wills to ensure the interest of those children.

Aishwarya Says:

I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.

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