INTRODUCTION

We obviously are living in a 21^st century world, where our unrestricted access to the internet in most cases has made it very easy for us to interact with people from all over the world without leaving our various locations.

While this can be said to be a thing of extreme blessing to us as Africans, it has also come with a lot of challenges, especially with respect to the dilution of our culture in ways that has destroyed the fabrics of what originally made us Africans.

Family unions over the years is a very big deal in Africa. This is one of the major reasons why men are expected to initiate and start nursing their families, once the man is mature, can feed himself and another.

One of the virtues expected to be seen in marriages, is trust. Two adults of opposite sex who hope to marry each other should trust themselves enough to share delicate details with their partners at the barest minimum.

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BEAUTY OF BEING MARRIED TO A WORTHY PARTNER

It is not news anywhere in the world, that the quality of a wife or a husband, spouses get for themselves for marital relationships to a very large extent, determines how successful or miserable, these people in such relationships would become in life.

The choice of whom a man or woman marries, indeed has so much to do with what the quality of the later days of their life would be. This leads me to the main conversation of this write up, which is about how spouses shortchange themselves on the long run by not letting their partners in, on their investments and some other things these family members mistake as private details.

WHY SHARE YOUR PRIVATE DETAILS WITH YOUR SPOUSE?

Most couples for the sake of trust deficit in such marital relationships, decide to keep some of their hitherto private details to themselves which unfortunately in most cases come to hurt them when they least expect.

Nobody prays to die untimely but this also does not in any way, erase the reality of untimely deaths in human populations. When someone’s death does not happen suddenly, a head injury accident which wasn’t prepared for, can occur which can make a man or woman lose their memories forever. While we do not pray for these, such happens every other time even to talk speaking Christians.

You would be amazed to know that some men and women who are in marital relationships which could be adjudged peaceful by external observers, conceal their investments, passwords and similar details from each other.

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The reason expressed above is why in some cases, when these breadwinners in some cases, or their spouses pass on suddenly, most of their investments done in secret are lost outrightly to strangers with no family member, having any trace to such investments of theirs. In some cases, their family members maybe be unable to access these accounts because of not having their passwords. My inability to know my late Father’s ATM password cost my family a lot of millions of naira.

21^st CENTURY REALITIES

We now live in a world where majority of our dealings and transactions are done with codes and passwords, which are assumed to be confidential to the owners. Our phones, social media handles, phone galleries, bank transactions are often passworded or locked with patterns for security reasons.

This means that without these codes, drawing of patterns or passwords, if the primary owners of these accounts who in this case maybe our family member, develop dementia by any chance or suddenly die, family relatives often stand a chance of never having access to these critical assets ever.

AVERTING THESE AVOIDABLE SETBACKS

There is a sense in which you must endeavor to get married to a reasonable and responsible partner, who you can at the least share these vital details with and not be scared of your trust being betrayed. Some men live with the fear that their spouses, can kill or betray them, if they know what they are worth and vice versa.

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No sensible man would want to work so hard to make a lot of money while he is alive, only to have strangers feast on these resources at his sudden death for the careless reason, that he did not disclose vital details to his family members about his investments and private transactions while alive.

We must make all efforts, to make sure that vital information about us is kept in a place where our family members can access them when we are no more. Don’t be fooled, the whole next of kin process of reclaiming of a family’s investments or deposits in a bank, when the direct owner of the wealth dies, is often herculean and in some instances almost impossible here in Nigeria.

As a family, that has stacked up wealth, it is necessary that conversations are had about who collects the death certificates when any of the spouses, is late. How the wealth of the family would be shared peradventure the death of any of the spouses occur, should either be discussed or well documented. Remember, you also do not want your brothers or sisters as a man, putting your daughters and their mother through hell, as they are dispossessed of what belongs to them because you only had female children.

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As a man, do everything within the scope of your power to ensure that your family which you love so much and worked so hard to amass a lot of wealth for, do not get traumatized by your relatives when you die because you were not proactive to protect their interests while alive.

This should be done by taking your spouse and kids, if they are that responsible enough along with what investments you are doing and where. Letting them in on who the Manager of your investment portfolios, Will and Trust account is, may help if they are responsible. You must also make available your passwords, security patterns, token and other related details needed to access your account to a safe place, so that in an event where you are no more, your family never suffers as a result of not having access to the vast wealth you must have accumulated while alive.