By not making a Will, you will not be able to distribute the assets according to your wishes after your death. Instead, the Court will define who will actually benefit from your death according to the law. When a person dies without making a Will, he is said to have died “intestate”. The relevant law which deals with the distribution of the property of an intestate is the Distribution Act 1958 (“Distribution Act”), which only applies to non-Muslims in Peninsular Malaysia. This means that without a Will, your estate will have to be distributed in accordance with the Distribution Act 1958. By having this Last Will and Testament, it will supersede the Distribution Act 1958, where you can control your distribution to your loved ones.
Furthermore, if you died intestate, your next of kin would have to apply for a Letter of Administration to appoint an administrator and would have to go through a lengthy process that can take years to obtain the Letter of Administration. However, if you have a Will, the process will be much faster (shorter time than Letter of Administration) as your appointed executor of your Will would apply for a Grant of Probate from the Court to allow your executor to execute your Will.
