Youth movement emerges for registering wills

People registering wills in China are getting younger, according to a white paper released by the China Will Registration Center today. 

The number of will registrants born in the 1980s reached 503 last year in China, surging nearly 700 percent in four years and more than twice the number in 2019 — partly due to the coronavirus pandemic, center officials said.

About 97 percent of wills registered last year by people born in the 1980s regarded housing, and 15.89 percent on stocks and funds. 

Last year, 209 people born in the 1990s in China registered wills, compared with 166 in 2019.

"Many of them had their own housing properties purchased by their parents, and some had shares from their parents, which prompted them to register wills to protect these properties," said Chen Kai, director of the center's management committee.  

Among those born in the 1990s, 81.6 percent of wills involved bank deposits, and 71.5 percent related to housing. About 21 percent concerned virtual property such as Alipay, WeChat and QQ.

The youngest person who registered a will was 17 years old. 

An 18-year-old university student is leaving more than 20,000 yuan (US$3,077) in her bank account to a friend who helped her during a difficult time. She said she may make a new will and increase the number of heirs if her savings increase. Registering a will is not the terminal point of life but a new start, she said. 

The number of people below the age of 59 accounted for more than 54 percent of will registrants last year compared with about 30 percent in 2017, among whom 31.5 percent were between the ages of 50 and 59, and 28 were between 40 and 49. 

Women accounted for almost 61 percent.

There has been strong demand from medical workers to register wills during the pandemic, according to the report.

Apartments, villas, office buildings, shops, factories and parking spaces are also mentioned in wills.

The proportion of direct inheritance to children (28.7 percent) dropped as more people are leaving properties to their spouses (29.8 percent).

"More people made such decisions to guarantee their spouses' well-being later in life," said Chen.

The newly adopted Civil Code provides more will registration options such as print and recording.

Established in 2013, the center had provided will registration services to 256,000 people by the end of last year, and the overall number of people registering their wills is increasing. Last year, the center provided registration services to 54,513 people, up 12 percent from 2019.

However, the percentage of people who register wills is still low, less than 0.5 percent in many Chinese cities due to deeply rooted suspicions, said Chen.