Cheap wills

I came across a report in Free Malaysia Today yesterday about why we should take the preparation of a will seriously. A poorly prepared will can leave a family fighting in court for years, and that was what happened to the family of a woman named R Letchemy, whose will was signed just five weeks before she died.

Letchemy was 74 when she signed the will on 06 October 2021. She died on 11 November that year, but instead of settling her estate, the document became the centre of a legal dispute that dragged on for four years. Her brother, R Supparamaniam, challenged the will and sought to have the whole document declared invalid.

The High Court in Malacca eventually upheld most of the will's provisions. The judge found that Letchemy had the mental capacity to make a will and understood and approved how she wanted her assets distributed. This included leaving out her brother and his family. It may not have been a decision that everyone agreed with, but a person is generally entitled to decide who should inherit their estate.

However, one clause did not survive the court challenge. It was intended to penalise anyone who challenged the will or helped someone else to do so. The judge found insufficient evidence that Letchemy had understood and approved this particular provision, and it was struck out. 

There was another complication. Letchemy could not read English, the language in which the will was written. Although a solicitor had explained the document to her in Tamil before she signed it, the court found shortcomings in the way her instructions had been recorded and in the evidence showing how the will had been explained. There was no contemporaneous note documenting the explanation or the solicitor's assessment of her understanding.

So it is not enough to produce a document and get the client to sign it, there is a need to establish that the client understands what the will says and that it reflects their intentions. This becomes even more important when the will contains unusual provisions or excludes close family members from an inheritance. 

The law firm involved had charged between RM500 and RM700 for preparing a will. In a postscript to his judgment, Judicial Commissioner K Raja Segaran made the point that the care required in preparing a will should depend on what is at stake, not on how much the fee charged. As he put it, “A modest fee does not lessen the duty.”

The judge also recommended several safeguards, including recording the client's instructions carefully, checking the assets involved, explaining the draft in a language the client understands and keeping a record of the questions asked to establish that the client understands the document. He also warned against simply reusing standard clauses from earlier wills without checking that they reflect the wishes of the person making the will.

So this report reinforces the importance of having a properly prepared will in the first place. Through companies like Rockwills Corporation, the aim is to help ensure that a will is drafted clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is based on the testator's instructions and wishes. The person making the will should understand what is written, have the opportunity to clarify anything that is unclear and be satisfied that the document says what he or she actually wants it to say.

Of course, no one can guarantee that a will will never be challenged. But taking the time to explain the provisions properly and making sure the instructions are clearly documented can help reduce the risk of misunderstandings and disputes later. In Letchemy's case, probate was eventually granted to her niece, N Selvarani, subject to the removal of the disputed clause. 

The lesson here is that making a will is one thing, but making sure it is properly prepared is another. Most of us would prefer not to think too much about what happens to our estate after we are gone, but it is worth spending some time getting our affairs in order while we are still around to explain what we want. Otherwise, our family may be left trying to interpret our intentions, with the possibility of years of disagreement and legal expenses.

If there are questions about making a will, or about how Rockwills Corporation can help, anyone can get in touch with me. I'm happy to help clarify the process and answer any questions. It is better to sort these matters out while we are still around to explain what we want, rather than leave our family to work it out for themselves later.

Advanced glycation end products

Lately, I've been attending more health talks than ever before. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don't know lah. Maybe it's a sign of getting older when health becomes a more frequent topic of conversation. On Friday night, I was at The Old Frees' Association for a session that included constipation and hernia. Yesterday, I was at the Adventist Church in Bukit Mertajam for a talk on kidney health. Some of the slides certainly opened my eyes to a few things.

This wasn't my first visit to the church. In fact, I go there quite often, even though I'm a Buddhist. The church members have been very accommodating to both my wife and me, and we've taken part in some of their activities as well. Religion aside, I've always felt comfortable joining in. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to take part in one another's activities. 

The talk included something called Advanced Glycation End Products, or AGEs for short. These are compounds that can form when food is cooked at high temperatures, especially when meat is fried, grilled or roasted. The slides explained how AGEs are associated with inflammation and oxidative stress, which can affect our health, including our kidneys.

We all know that too much fried food isn't good for us, but how often do we think about the way our food is cooked? Dr Kuan suggested steaming, boiling and stewing instead, as these methods generally produce fewer AGEs than high-temperature cooking. Nobody is asking us to give up our favourite fried chicken or roast meat altogether, of course. But perhaps we can make a few changes to the way we prepare our food.

The other advice was very familiar enough: eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans, and pay attention to our diet. Unfortunately for me, these things are easier said than done. I know that as someone who has to keep an eye on his health, understanding what we should do and actually doing it are two different things.

Anyway, that's another health talk attended and another bit of information picked up along the way. I've certainly been going to more of these talks lately. Whether I'm becoming more health-conscious or simply more aware of the things that can go wrong as we grow older, I'll leave that to my wife to decide.

The automatic fuel adjustment factor

Most people don't pay much attention to their electricity bills. Or at least, not until something looks unusual. And I'm one of them. Every month, I generally consider my electricity usage to be normal. There will always be some fluctuations, of course, but they don't usually amount to very much. I'm quite happy as long as my monthly bill doesn't exceed RM150, and generally, RM90 to RM100 is about my average.

But yesterday, I attended a talk on ESG and one of the speakers mentioned something that got me wanting to know more. It was a feature on our electricity bills called the Automatic Fuel Adjustment or AFA. Apparently, this has been causing our Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) bills to fluctuate quite a bit this year. So I decided to find out a little more about this AFA thingy.

As I understand it, the AFA is a monthly adjustment determined by the Energy Commission to reflect changes in the cost of fuel used to generate electricity, particularly coal and gas, as well as movements in the US dollar-ringgit exchange rate. When the costs are lower than the standard baseline, consumers get a rebate. When they are higher, we pay a surcharge. The adjustment is calculated according to how much electricity we use. One sen per kWh may not sound like much, but it works out to RM1 for every 100 kWh consumed. For households using a lot more electricity, the difference can become quite noticeable. And this year, the difference has been anything but small.

January 2026 started with an AFA rebate of 4.99 sen per kWh. The rebate gradually became smaller over the following months before disappearing altogether. By May, we were paying a surcharge of 1.38 sen per kWh. Things got worse from there. The surcharge reached 3.80 sen per kWh in August before easing slightly to 3.67 sen in September. That meant September was the fifth consecutive month in which the AFA was a surcharge rather than a rebate.

For a household using 1,200 kWh a month, the difference amounts to quite a lot. In January, the AFA effectively reduced the bill by about RM60. By September, the same amount of electricity attracted an additional RM44. That's a swing of roughly RM104 a month without using a single extra unit of electricity. For those using 800 kWh, the January-to-September difference is about RM69. At 1,800 kWh, it is around RM156, while someone using 3,000 kWh a month would see a difference of roughly RM260.

I am quite fortunate in the sense that my electricity consumption is low enough that I don't have to worry about the AFA surcharge. Under the normal arrangement, domestic users consuming 600 kWh or less a month are exempt from the AFA charge, the RM10 monthly retail charge and the eight per cent service tax. And there's some good news for those using a little more electricity. Following concerns about the rising cost of living, the government has temporarily raised the protection threshold from 600 to 800 kWh a month, covering electricity consumption from 01 September 2026 till December. The move came after Cabinet discussions, partly in response to the hotter weather and haze, which had pushed up electricity consumption in some households.

There's one important detail about this 600 kWh rule, or the temporary 800 kWh rule, that can easily catch people out. If our monthly consumption stays within the applicable threshold, the AFA surcharge is waived. But cross that threshold by even one unit and the AFA applies to all the electricity we use, not just the units above 600 or 800 kWh. So a household that normally stays just below the limit could suddenly find its bill going up quite noticeably in a hotter month, simply because the air-conditioning has been running longer.

For households consuming up to 800 kWh a month, the temporary protection means they are also exempt from the RM10 monthly retail charge and the eight per cent service tax during this period. For those using between 601 and 800 kWh, the savings can amount to roughly RM40 to RM47 a month, depending on consumption. 

The good news is that there should be a retrospective adjustment for our September consumption, to be automatically reflected in bills issued from October onwards. And for the remainder of this year, households using up to 800 kWh a month have a little more breathing space. But what happens when the temporary protection expires at the end of December is anyone's guess.

There's another point I learnt from looking into all this. The AFA outlook isn't particularly encouraging either. The latest forecast had suggested that the surcharge would ease to 3.36 sen per kWh in October and 2.81 sen in November, before rising sharply to 5.48 sen in December. The October rate has since been confirmed at 3.61 sen per kWh, slightly higher than forecast. The November and December figures remain projections for now.

Come 1 January 2027, the 800 kWh protection is due to end unless the government decides to extend it. That may be when we find out just how much of a difference this temporary protection has been making to household electricity bills. So, while we may sometimes blame TNB when the bill arrives looking rather unhealthy, the story is a little more complex. Much of the fluctuation has to do with the cost of producing electricity, particularly fuel prices and movements in the ringgit against the US dollar. The continuing conflict in the Middle East hasn't helped matters either, given its impact on global energy markets.

For the moment, at least, households using no more than 800 kWh a month have some welcome protection. But it is only temporary. Perhaps this is a good time for the rest of us to pay a little more attention to our electricity bills, instead of simply paying them every month and assuming that everything is normal. I know I shall be doing that from now on.