Hongkongers urged to write their will as survey shows most do not have one

"My husband is a lawyer, but we don't have a will," says Marjie Sweeney, a mother of three girls who lives in Hong Kong with her family. "We just haven't got round to it."

A recent client survey conducted by investment firm The Henley Group showed that about 70 per cent of those polled - predominantly international investors/expatriates - had not yet written a will. Almost half of the target group had children under 18, and 60 per cent were property owners.

So the Sweeneys, who have lived outside their native Scotland for almost 20 years, own property in London and have three children under 18 attending school in Hong Kong, are clearly not alone.

Henley Group CEO Mark Rawson says the results are "shocking", yet he is not surprised by them. "People don't think about these things until they are forced to think about them," he says. "It is like tax returns - anything that is unpleasant we tend to put off."

But if you are resident in Hong Kong and die without a will you have no control over what happens to your assets or who will look after your children.

Many people assume that if you die without a will - known as intestate - all the assets go to the surviving spouse, but Rawson says this is not necessarily the case. Even if you intend or wish for your assets to go a specific person and for guardianship of your children to go to a particular relative, "neither of these two things may happen if you don't have a valid will", he says, adding that "the laws of intestate will dictate how assets will be passed to next of kin in a fairly prescribed manner".