WILLS (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

The Minister for Law (Prof. S. Jayakumar): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

If I may just make a preliminary comment on this and the other two Bills which will also come up for Second Reading, these three Bills are Bills to reform three areas of the law and are basically amendments which have been proposed by the Law Reform Committee of the Academy of Law. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Academy of Law's Law Reform Committee for their contribution in this area. The amendments are rather technical but, nevertheless, are important in updating and bringing our laws up to date.

As for the Wills (Amendment) Bill, the Bill before us clarifies some of the provisions in the Wills Act (Cap. 352). First, amendments are made to the provisions concerning formal validity of wills. At present, if a person who is not domiciled in Singapore, for example, a foreigner, and he wishes to dispose of his movable property after his death, he has to ensure that his will complies with the law of his domicile. This has caused difficulties to lawyers, executors, trustees and the court because they have to determine three different issues, namely:

(a) the testator's domicile which is a rather complex legal concept;

(b) the formalities required by the law of the testator's domicile; and

(c) whether these have been complied with.

This information is often not easily ascertainable or accessible.

The amendments before us alleviate these difficulties by increasing the number of situations where wills may be treated by Singapore law as having been validly executed. The approach is similar to that in the United Kingdom Wills Act 1963. Clause 3 of the Bill introduces a new section 4A. Sub-section (1) provides that a will shall be treated as properly executed if its execution conforms to the internal law in force in any one of seven situations. They are:

(a) in the territory where the will was executed;

(b) in the territory where the testator was domiciled at the time of its execution of the will;

(c) in the territory where the testator was domiciled at the time of his death;

(d) in the territory where the testator had his habitual residence at the time of the execution of the will;

(e) in the territory where the testator had his habitual residence at the time of his death;

(f) in a state/country of which the testator was a national at the time of the execution of the will; and

(g) in a country of which the testator was a national at the time of his death.

In the case of immovable property, a will shall, in addition, be formally valid if it is executed in compliance with the law of the territory where the immovable property is situated.

Where a will is executed on board a vessel or aircraft, it has to comply with the internal law of the country with which the vessel or aircraft is closely associated, for example, its place of registration.

To simplify the procedure, a new section 4A will provide specifically for the law applicable when a will is executed on board a vessel or aircraft. This will also be the case where a will revokes another will or a provision of a will, and exercises a power of appointment.

Finally, Sir, under section 9 of the existing Wills Act, no witness should be a beneficiary or the spouse of the beneficiary. A gift under the will to such a witness, or spouse, will fail. The amendments alleviate the harshness of this provision by amending the law to provide that an attesting witness or his spouse can take the gift so long as the will is duly executed in the presence of two other witnesses, which is the minimum statutory requirement, and who are not beneficiaries. In other words, the attestation of the beneficiary and his spouse will, for this purpose, be ignored.

Sir, these amendments, as I said, are technical but they bring our law into line with current practice in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Prof. Jayakumar].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.