Making a Will in Japan

The notary public option

A few months ago, I made a shocking discovery: there was a good chance that when I died, all my assets would go to the Japanese government and my family would get nothing.

(don’t panic, this is extremely unlikely to apply to you)

The reason for this is my very particular situation: my only person I am legally related to is my wife.

• My parents died over 30 years ago. My grandparents more recently. They are all gone now.
• My brother died in 2018.
• I haven’t adopted my wife’s children. As a non-Japanese citizen, I am not able to do so here but instead must do so in my country of nationality, and the UK does not do adult adoption so this is not currently possible.
• My grandkids are thus also not legally related to me.

Absent a will, all my assets would go to my wife if I died, unless she died before me or we died at the same time. In that case I would have no heirs and my assets would go to the Japanese government eventually.

This would not do.

That is not really what I want to happen to my hard-saved wealth.

So I set out to make a will, toute de suite.

Wills in Japan

In Japan, you broadly have three options when it comes to making a will.

1. You can write the will yourself. There is a lot of information about how to do this online, with suggested formats, etc. This is free, and as long as you don’t make any mistakes, legally valid. There is a risk the will may be lost or ‘lost’ though.
   
2. You can have a notary public do the will for you. This costs money, but they are likely to ensure the will is legally valid and will also store a copy so there is no chance of it being lost (this is what I chose to do this time).
   
3. You can get a lawyer to write the will. This seems to be extremely expensive in Japan, and I am not sure why it would be necessary (perhaps when your estate is very complicated?). According to this law firm website, the cost to have a lawyer write my will would have been almost an extra million yen for me this time, so I didn’t do this.

Getting a Notary Deed Will

As it happens, my wife’s parents wanted to amend their wills, so we all went in together.

For the first session we all went in together and my in-laws discussed the details of their new wills. I made an appointment to come and talk about my will too.

In the second session I explained what I wanted (fairly simple, everything to my wife if I die before her, and my assets to be divided between my kids, grandkids, and a cousin if not). The notary asked about UK law, and I explained that UK law defers to the country of residence for non-resident citizens so there was no issue with making a will in Japan.

(Japanese law defers to the law of nationality for non-Japanese residents, but many countries do the same as the UK for non-resident citizens. It is probably worth checking what your country does in that case)

I got a list of documents to get (koseki for Japanese people, copy of passport for non-Japanese, copy of taxes for real estate, details of my main bank and broker accounts). Made an appointment to bring the documents.

During the third session I brought the documents in and confirmed the details I wanted in the will. The notary asked how much my estate was worth. There was a long silence after I told him, and he asked: “Really? That much?”

(now I know the reason he asked was to set the fee, so maybe I should have low-balled the estimate)

I also went in later to drop off an inkan touroku shoumeisho which I printed at a convenience store using my My Number card (the notary forgot to mention it when asking for documents the first time round). Really easy and convenient, so much better than the old system of having to go into the ward office to get it.

Then the notary sent us a final draft of the wills to check. There were no issues.

The final session: we all went in together and one by one confirmed and hankod our wills.

First the will was read in front of witnesses (we paid extra to have ‘professional’ witnesses come in, but you can bring your own if you want). Then we all confirmed the details and hankod.

(I asked to include my Japanese kanji alias as well as my passport name in English, just in case I naturalize later, as that is the name I will use)

We got two printed copies of the will (one for us and one for the executor, the default seems to be that the person with the largest share of the inheritance becomes the executor). A third copy is stored at the notary office for 140 years, and we had to sign a form to give permission to create a further PDF copy to be stored electronically in case of anything happening to notary office (natural disasters etc.).

The fees

The fees seem to match the list on this website. My will cost slightly more than my wife’s parents wills, but my estate is larger and more complicated. The notary suggested listing the account numbers and details for my main bank and broker accounts, and I had a longer list of heirs, which resulted in more pages in the will.

My will cost 61,750 yen, my father in law’s cost 48,500 yen, and my mother in law’s cost 24,750 yen. We also paid 4,000 yen to each of the two witnesses for each will, so 24,000 yen in total.

The witnesses were just two random old guys. I am guessing they are friends of the notary 😉

Conclusion

This was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. It took a bit of time, but we could probably have sent the documents in by mail if we had wanted do and done more over the phone and thus had fewer visits.

The cost was reasonable and I think worth it for the peace of mind knowing that the wills are definitely legally sound and also stored safely.

Now, were it not for my special situation I might not have bothered to make a will. The legal default inheritance division would have been fine if my kids were recognised as such under Japanese law. Unfortunately they are not, so it was necessary to make sure.

How about you? Have you made a will in Japan or abroad? Has anyone written their own or used a lawyer?

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