Alice was devastated when her partner died suddenly. They had been together for 15 years in Hong Kong but somehow never got around to marriage. Emotionally wrecked, matters got even worse when she discovered the man she had loved had many years earlier made a will leaving everything to his adult children in Australia.
Not only was she alone, she was penniless and homeless. Their money was in his bank account. The house was in his name. Legally, everything was going to grown-up children of a marriage that ended 20 years ago.
'This is not an uncommon situation,' says Janet Hunt, a director of SAR International, which over the past eight years has completed about 3,000 wills for Hong Kong residents. She is a certified, professional will writer. 'I estimate that only about 10 per cent of people in Hong Kong have proper legal wills,' she says.
The desperate situation in which Alice (not her real name) found herself is easily avoidable. Her long-term partner had no intention of causing her distress.
For years they had talked idly of making wills leaving everything to each other. They never got around to it. The will he made in 1975 was half forgotten until he died suddenly of a heart attack.
The legal morass of dying intestate (without a will) can be equally frustrating and overwhelming for married people who do not own all property jointly and who don't have separate bank accounts.