Who is your nominee

Whenever we fill up application form for any thing related with money there will be a space for filling up the details of nominee.Most of the time our brain will be interested more with number crunching with respect to expected returns from the investment than thinking about what to fill in the nominee space.Sometimes the person who is selling the product will ask you who to nominate and fill it up by himself or sometimes the place is left blank. Do not forget to nominate your near and dear for all your investments. The nominee has the rights to accept   the proceedings from your investments in case of your demise. The next question is who can i nominate? the answer is simple you can nominate any person you like. Even your friend can be your nominee.

                            Lets take an example Mr X who is married  has an investment in SBI fixed deposit and he nominated his friend Mr.A in the application. Mr X met with an accident and died. Who will be eligible for the money in the bank, Mr A or Mrs X???. Most of us believe that Mr A being the nominee has rights in the money, but the reality is as per law even though Mr A being the nominee has no rights in the proceedings from the bank. He has got right only to accept the proceedings. If their are legal heirs, only they can claim for the money. The nominee has got only rights to accept the proceedings but cant use it if their is a legal heir. In case of dispute the matter will be taken to court and if the heirs submit legal heir certificate the proceeds will go to legal heirs and not to the nominee in this case friend of Mr X.

Few tips while filling the application form.

• Never forget to fill in the nominee details
• Its better to nominate your legal heir
• In case of minors a benificeiry has to be appointed.
• Change the nomination to spouse from mother once you married if required.
• If you have to nominate more than one person you can add more by defining the percentage of share for each nominee.

its always good to be optimistic, in case god forbid something happens to me, my family must not suffer because of me being careless. Better i fill the nomination details and keep it updated. One more important thing, its my responsibility to inform the nominee about the investment and ask the nominee to safe guard the investment documents.