[Invest&Law] Inheritance Disputes Increase... 'Will Certificate Storage System' Faces Abolition Risk

Handwritten Certificate Loss, Damage, and Forgery Prevention Function
Bill Proposed Last September... Pending for Half a Year
Japan Implemented 4 Years Ago... 38% Decrease in Disputes Over 2 Years

As an alternative to prevent inheritance disputes among family members, "writing a will" is gaining attention, and there are ongoing calls to introduce a "public will storage system" in public institutions such as courts to keep wills safe. Although a related bill was proposed last year, it failed to pass the National Assembly and is now at risk of being discarded. Experts unanimously agree that urgent improvements to the outdated will legislation are needed.

◆ Bill to introduce the ‘Public Will Storage System’ proposed in September last year = According to reporting by Legal News, Representative Kim Sang-hee of the Democratic Party of Korea introduced the "Act on the Storage of Wills, etc." in September last year. The bill was referred to the Legislation and Judiciary Committee in October of the same year and has been pending for six months. With only two months left until the 21st National Assembly closes on May 29, it is unlikely that the bill will be reviewed and pass both the Judiciary Committee and the plenary session of the National Assembly.

The bill centers on establishing will storage offices at family courts or district courts to prevent forgery, alteration, loss, and damage of wills. Testators can apply to the "will custodian" managing the will storage office for the storage and inspection of their wills. Upon the testator’s death, the custodian must promptly notify the relevant heirs of the will’s storage. Additionally, after a period deemed necessary to prevent inheritance disputes following the testator’s death, the will may be destroyed. Anyone objecting to such disposal can file an objection with the competent court.

Writing a will is emerging as an alternative to reduce inheritance disputes. Most inheritance disputes arise because the deceased left no "last words" regarding their property before death, but leaving a will in advance reduces conflicts among heirs. Since there is no system in Korea to publicly manage handwritten wills, critics point out that the domestic will system is outdated.

Lee Yang-won (65, Judicial Research and Training Institute class 14), vice president of the Lawyers’ Association for Will Legislation Improvement, said, "It is common for testators to keep their wills in a wardrobe or entrust them to beneficiaries or executors, but this raises concerns about the loss, damage, forgery, or alteration of handwritten wills, as well as doubts about the authenticity of their creation and content. This sometimes turns the existence of a will into a source of dispute." He emphasized, "To enable anyone to easily make a will, the introduction of a public will storage system is urgently needed."

◆ In Japan, the state safely stores wills for only about 35,000 won = Inheritance disputes are increasing every year. According to the Supreme Court’s Judicial Yearbook, the number of cases filed regarding "disposition of inherited property division" steadily rose from 771 cases in 2014 to 2,776 cases in 2022. The number of "claims for return of statutory portion" lawsuits also more than tripled over ten years, from 590 cases in 2012 to 1,872 cases in 2022. The rise in inheritance disputes is attributed to increased deaths without heirs such as relatives due to rising real estate values, and the increase of unmarried and elderly single-person households.

Japan enacted the "Act on the Storage of Wills by the Legal Affairs Bureau" in 2018 and has been operating a public handwritten will storage system since July 2020. Having entered a super-aged society in 2007 (where the elderly population aged 65 and over accounts for more than 20% of the total population), Japan faced social issues regarding the handling of inherited property. A social consensus was formed that promoting wills, especially handwritten wills, was necessary to solve the problem.

Accordingly, the Japanese government implemented a revised inheritance law in July 2019 to facilitate handwritten wills, and the following year, the Legal Affairs Bureau (equivalent to Korea’s registry office) began managing the storage of handwritten wills under the new law. Users can deposit their wills at storage offices located in regional Legal Affairs Bureaus by paying 3,900 yen (approximately 35,000 won). The number of people entrusting their wills to the state in Japan has been steadily increasing.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Justice, in the first year after the law’s enforcement, from July 2020 to June 2021, there were 20,849 storage applications (an average of 1,737 per month), and from July 2021 to May 2022, 15,039 storage applications were received. Data released by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2022 showed that since the introduction of the public will management system, inheritance disputes have decreased by 38.2% over two years.

Hong Yoon-ji, Legal News Reporter

※This article is based on content supplied by Law Times.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.