My wife's aunt Augusta had no children so her estate is being divided among her many nephews and nieces. However, she left no will, which complicates things quite a bit. All sorts of bureaucratic procedures kick in. The division itself is straight forward, but checks and balances along the way are tedious and cumbersome.
This is in contrast to my English aunt who died back in 2015. She too had no children, but she left a will with all names mentioned together with their allotted portions of her estate. Her will was written with the help of a lawyer, and the result was a reduction in obstacles. Her estate was sold and the proceeds were sent to the named recipients.
This illustrates the importance of a will in cases where things aren't entirely straight forward. However, writing a will is not the only way to smooth things out.
I've opted for a different strategy. Instead of writing a will, I divided my estate early. My three children in Norway own what used to be my paper assets in Norway, and my son in Portugal, by another mother, owns the realized gains from my house in Norway, which happen to be of equal worth to what each of my children in Norway received.
This is an unusual division. Standard inheritance law would divide everything equal. My son in Portugal would have ended up with Norwegian paper assets, and my children in Norway would have ended up with liquid assets in Portugal. Such a division would be legally correct but impractical. My son in Portugal would eventually sell his paper assets. My children in Norway would have trouble getting hold of my liquid assets. Things would be complicated.
Explaining this to a lawyer would've been difficult and costly, so I decided to divide everything right away, with the caveat that I remain in control of the management of the estate for as long as I live. My children are the official owners of what was once mine, but I act as the final arbitrator when it comes to major investment decisions related to my estate.
This is not regulated by any official law. I have no right to meddle in my children's affairs. However, I've raised my children well, and they find the arrangement reasonable and fair.
The arrangement has worked perfectly so far, and I expect it to continue this way, not least because my meddling is kept to a minimum. I laid out the rules in 2017, when I made the division, and I haven't changed them since. Everything is clear and predictable.
The rules are summarized in a few sentences in an e-mail, making this e-mail a will of sorts. There's no legal weight in it. It's a contract based solely on the honor code that naturally exists between the head of a household and his children. But that's all that's required when children have been raised well.
As for my son in Portugal, I've resorted to a similar arrangement due to the fact that his inheritance from me is an unregistered allotment of metals. Unlike his mother's apartment and bank accounts which are registered with the state, the metals exists in a quantity and a place known only to me, my wife and two other people. One of them is my son's half sister in Portugal, and the other one is a half brother in Norway.
This arrangement is meant to secure our treasure in the event of something catastrophic. In the absence of a registry office, the natural alternative becomes once again an e-mail and a verbal contract. The location of the metals are communicated verbally. But the division of it is written down in an e-mail. Everybody agrees to keep the location secret, and everybody has an e-mail outlining exactly how much of it belongs to whom.
I have a good relationship with my stepdaughter and my son in Norway, so I have no doubt that the division will be executed correctly in the unlikely event that something catastrophic should happen to me and my wife. With one of the witnesses located abroad, there's no risk of something hitting us all at the same time, so my Portuguese son's inheritance is fully taken care of through this measure.
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