Wills: Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow…
I enjoy reading newspapers when I travel as they provide another window into what is on the minds of local people. Last week, I came across what appeared to be a regular column addressing questions of law, with the title: “Wills: Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow.” The article began:
“Often completion of a will is seen as a bad omen, as acceleration of a fact that should naturally occur but, you hope, not soon. However, the [proper] execution of this document, in addition to giving possessions according to one’s wishes, can prevent future litigation.”
Sound advice, correct? The opening was followed by descriptions of procedures for use with informal or holographic wills versus formal wills that are executed before a notary. What intrigued me, however, was this advice on how to avoid litigation over estates was in Granma, the “official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.” While visiting Cuba for the first time last week as part of a small Penn State Faculty group tour, I was surprised to learn there was more private ownership of property than I had expected in Cuba. Now I would be interested in knowing more about how and why any disputes over bequests or inheritance of privately owned assets or property tend to arise in Cuba.
In Cuba, as in other Latin American countries, lawyers can have a specific role as a “notary” in formalizing documents including wills; this role is not the same as the more ministerial role of notaries as witnesses in the U.S.
It appears that in Havana, execution of a will can also include filing it with a central Registry, or, in other provinces, with an office in the local court. To preserve confidentiality, the testator has the option of registering only certain basic data, such as his or her name and date of completion of the will, and the identity of the notary, rather than the full content of the bequests.
The translation of this article from its original Spanish, written by Onaisys Fonticoba, is mine — and is admittedly a bit rough, even with the help of Google Translate. Granma is also published on the internet in several languages, including English, although the editions are not identical. Granma, the name of the newspaper, is a tribute to the name of the “yacht” used by Fidel and his fellow fighters when he returned to Cuba in 1956.