Charles Muhumza has made available for download his article “Resealing of Foreign Grants of Letters of Administration and Probate in Uganda”. The abstract is as follows:
We spend almost every waking minute of our lives trying to amass immense wealth. But as the quote, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, goes “only two things in life are certain, death and taxes”. So when the Grim reaper finally shows up on your doorstep, what happens to all that wealth that you toiled for? Most people desire to pull the strings even after they have crossed over to the other side, they desire to have control over what happens to their property, after they have died and that is why they make wills. However, many people die without leaving behind a will. This happens for so many reasons as some think that talking about and preparing for death is an abomination; they fear that talking about death is literally inviting over the reaper to your house and of course, there is always the feeling that death is so far away and we still have a long life ahead of us and since death comes over unannounced like a thief, many of us are caught unawares and unprepared. Many a times the will left behind does not meet the legal formalities required for it to be valid and hence it isn’t a valid will in the eyes of the law and so the deceased is deemed to have died intestate.
When one passes away, all his property devolves to his personal representative, who in the event that the deceased left a will is an executor, who is named in the will and in instances where no will was left, the personal representative is the administrator. Any persons holding such offices of the executor and of an administrator are the ones with the authority to deal with the estate of the deceased and he who deals with the property of the deceased without such authority, is said to have intermeddled with the estate of the deceased and it is an offence under the succession Act Cap. 162 and the Administrator General’s Act CAP. 157.
To use legal parlance, he who dies without leaving behind a will is said to have died intestate and he who dies having left behind a will is said to have died testate.
To see the full article, click: “Resealing of Foreign Grants of Letters of Administration and Probate in Uganda”
Posted by Marin Larkin, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal.
Wealth Strategies Journal 