There is a scene that plays out in Nigerian families with grim regularity.
A man dies. Within days — sometimes within hours — relatives arrive. There are claims on the land, on the house, on the business. Nobody can find the documents. The widow does not know which bank held the accounts. Someone produces a version of what the deceased “always said” he wanted, and it happens to favour the person saying it.
What follows is often years of conflict, sometimes litigation, occasionally a family permanently divided. And in a distressing number of cases, a widow and children lose property that was unambiguously theirs, because nothing was written down.
None of this is inevitable. Almost all of it is preventable with a few documents and one uncomfortable conversation.
Why nobody has the conversation
The superstition. A quiet belief that discussing death invites it. Few people would defend this out loud, and it shapes behaviour anyway. A husband raises the subject of a will; his wife says God forbid; the subject closes for another three years.
The theology confusion. A sense that planning for death displays a lack of faith. But Scripture repeatedly commends preparation — Joseph’s entire ministry in Egypt was a fourteen-year contingency plan, and Proverbs praises the ant that stores in summer. Planning is not doubt. It is love expressed in paperwork.
The assumption that estates are for the wealthy. The most damaging misconception. A person with one property, a small business, and a savings account has an estate. In fact, families with modest assets suffer most from the absence of planning, because there is no cushion to absorb the losses of a dispute.
Simple avoidance. It requires thinking about your own death, and about which of your relatives might behave badly afterwards. Most people would rather not.
What happens when there is no will
This is where most people’s understanding stops, and it is worth being clear.
If you die without a valid will, you die intestate, and the law decides distribution. What that means in Nigeria depends on several factors — the type of marriage, the state, and in some cases which customary law applies.
The critical point: the outcome is often not what the deceased would have chosen, and it is frequently worse for the widow and children than most people assume.
Nigerian courts have in recent years struck down customary rules that disinherited widows and female children, and the constitutional position on discrimination is clear. But a right you have to litigate for is a right that costs money, years, and family relationships to enforce. The relatives occupying the property are not deterred by the constitution; they are deterred by a document.
Intestacy also means delay. Letters of administration take time and money to obtain, during which accounts may be frozen and the family may have no access to funds — while school fees, rent, and living costs continue.
A will does not eliminate all of this. It removes most of the ambiguity that disputes feed on.
The documents that matter
1. A valid will
The foundational document. For a will to be valid in Nigeria it must generally be in writing, signed by the testator, and witnessed by two people who are present at the same time — and critically, the witnesses must not be beneficiaries, nor married to beneficiaries. A witness who is also a beneficiary can invalidate their own inheritance.
Practical points:
- Use a lawyer. Homemade wills are the single largest source of probate disputes, because small technical errors invalidate them entirely.
- Deposit it properly — with the probate registry, a solicitor, or a bank — and tell at least two people where it is. A perfect will nobody can find achieves nothing.
- Name an executor you trust who is likely to outlive you, and name a substitute.
- Review it after every major change: marriage, a child, a property purchase, a death.
2. A list of assets and where they are
Startlingly, this is often more immediately useful than the will itself.
Write down every bank and account, every property and where the documents physically sit, every insurance policy and insurer, pensions, investments, the business and its structure, and any debts owed to or by you.
Not the amounts, necessarily. The locations. A family that knows where things are can act; a family that does not spends months discovering assets, and sometimes never finds them at all.
3. Named beneficiaries
Check your pension, your life insurance, and any account with a nomination facility. Many people named someone a decade ago — a parent, a sibling, a former partner — and have never looked since.
This matters enormously, because named beneficiaries often pass outside the estate entirely and can override what a will says. It is a fifteen-minute task with disproportionate consequences.
4. Access
Passwords, PINs, and the location of keys. This feels like surrendering privacy, and the solution is a method rather than full disclosure: a sealed envelope in a known place, or a password manager with a designated emergency contact.
Increasingly, a family that cannot access an email account cannot access the statements, the correspondence, or in some cases the assets themselves.
5. Your wishes beyond the assets
Burial preferences — which in Nigerian families is frequently the first and fiercest dispute, particularly where the deceased’s community of origin and the widow’s family disagree.
Also: guardianship of minor children, whether the house should be sold or kept, whether the business should continue or be wound up.
Your family will make these decisions under the worst conditions of their lives. Knowing your mind is a mercy.
Alternatives and complements to a will
A trust. Assets placed in a properly constituted trust sit outside the estate, avoid probate delay, and are considerably harder to contest. Worth exploring where assets are substantial, where minor children are involved, or where you have reason to expect a challenge.
Joint ownership with right of survivorship. Property held this way passes directly to the survivor. Useful, but take legal advice — the form of ownership matters and the default is often not what people assume.
Life insurance. Frequently the most efficient tool available, particularly for families whose wealth is in illiquid property. It pays quickly, passes to a named beneficiary largely outside the estate, and provides cash exactly when the family needs it and everything else is locked in probate.
Gifts during your lifetime. Transferring some assets while alive removes them from dispute. It also removes them from your control, so this requires care.
How to actually raise it
The framing determines whether the conversation happens.
With your spouse: “I realised that if something happened to me tomorrow, you wouldn’t know where half our things are. That’s not fair to you. Can we sort it out this month?”
You have made yourself the subject, named a specific solvable problem, and attached a timeframe. That is the difference between a conversation and a resolution.
With ageing parents: harder, and more urgent. “Daddy, I don’t want to talk about anything happening to you. But if it did, we wouldn’t know where the documents are, and I’ve seen what that does to families. Can you write it down somewhere we can find it?”
Ask for the location list first rather than the will. It is far less confronting, and it delivers most of the practical benefit immediately.
Attach it to an event. A property purchase, a new baby, a new year, or — most effectively — the aftermath of watching another family go through a dispute. That is when people are most willing.
The cost, honestly
A straightforward will drawn up by a Nigerian solicitor is not expensive relative to what it protects — considerably less than a single year of school fees for most families, and a small fraction of the cost of a contested estate.
Set against that: probate disputes routinely consume years and substantial sums in legal fees, and the property itself is often deteriorating or occupied while the case runs.
The comparison is not close.
If you do nothing else
Three things, this month, in order of value per hour spent:
- Write the location list. One page. Where everything is. Give a copy to your spouse and tell one other trusted person where it is. Costs nothing, takes an hour, solves a large share of the problem.
- Check your named beneficiaries. Pension, insurance, any account with a nomination. Fifteen minutes.
- Book a solicitor for the will. One appointment.
Everything else can follow.
A closing thought
There is a particular kind of care that does not feel like care while you are doing it. Listing account numbers is not romantic. Reviewing a beneficiary form is not intimate. Signing a will is not a love language anyone writes about.
But the widow who knows exactly where everything is, who is not fighting relatives over land, whose children’s fees are covered because someone thought ahead — she experiences that paperwork as one of the most loving things her husband ever did.
Have the conversation. It takes an evening, and it is the least dramatic and most important evening you will spend this year.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Nigerian succession law varies by state, by the type of marriage, and by applicable customary or Islamic law. Consult a qualified Nigerian solicitor about your own circumstances.
