A legal practitioner, Mohammed Adam, has clarified the place of the next of kin and the Will of a property owner especially after their death.
He says being the next of kin alone does not guarantee someone access to the dead relative’s money in a bank.
In an interview in SUNDAY PUNCH, Mohammed explains:
“By law, a next of kin is someone who is required for information purposes only, i.e. someone who can be reached immediately if the account holders are unreachable. Being a next of kin, however, does not confer a legal right to acquire property or to have access to property or assets, money in an account, pension, and all of that. The obligation of the next of kin is to be able to bring the death of the account holder to the attention of the bank or to the attention of someone who holds the money so that they can recognise whoever comes forward as the owner of the letter of administration. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you are my next of kin, and I have N20m in a bank. If I die today, your obligation by law is to only inform the bank that this person is no more. The bank will not transfer the money to you because you are just for information purposes.
“In a real-life case that I was involved in, a woman was named as next of kin to a successful businessman, who was her husband. She wrote the bank to give her the money in her husband’s account because she’s the next of kin. The bank refused and she went to court. We argued before the court that the fact that she’s the next of kin does not mean that she’s automatically entitled to the money. By law, she still requires a letter of administration to be able to have access to the money. The advantage is that the next of kin may be someone who is disqualified by law from applying for a letter of administration. I’ll give you an example.
” If a man now names his friend as next of kin, the friend does not have power, access, or rights to his money and he cannot apply for the letter of administration. But when there is a will, that will should automatically tell you who the money in the account is going to. The bank will work with what the will says concerning who will now have access to the account. But when there’s no will, it will work with the letter of administration. So to ensure that the transfer of wealth is moved to the next of kin, that account holder must have a will that states such.”
