How to Invest in Stocks for Beginners: Estate Planning

A 90-minute plan to document every investment, fix nominations, and write a will so your family never loses your money to unclaimed accounts.

## You have 90 minutes to make sure your family never loses your money Roughly ₹40,000 crore sits in Indian bank accounts and mutual funds that nobody has claimed. The owners are usually dead. The nominees are usually confused. And the money just sits there, compounding quietly for a beneficiary who does not know it exists. Here is what most investors get wrong. They spend years learning how to invest in stocks for beginners, build a portfolio, rebalance it, and then never write down where any of it lives. A folio number in an app. A demat account with a broker they opened in 2014 and forgot. A fixed deposit at a bank branch that got merged twice. Today you are going to fix that. Ninety minutes, one afternoon, and a single document your family can actually find. Not a legal masterpiece. A working map. ## Step 1: Build the asset inventory (30 minutes) Open a spreadsheet. Not a notebook, not a mental list. A spreadsheet you can email to two people. List every asset that pays you or holds value. For each one, capture four things: the institution, the account or folio number, the approximate value, and how someone else would access it. | Asset type | What to record | Where the trap hides | |---|---|---| | Mutual funds | Folio number, AMC, registrar (CAMS or KFintech) | Old folios with outdated address and no nominee | | Stocks and demat | DP ID, broker name, client ID | Broker shut down or merged, login dies with you | | Fixed deposits | Bank branch, FD receipt number, maturity date | Joint holder missing, so the FD freezes | | PPF and NPS | Account number, PRAN | Nomination often never updated after marriage | | Insurance | Policy number, insurer, sum assured | Family does not know a policy exists at all | | Property | Title deed location, registration number | Original documents in a locker nobody can open | The number that matters is not your net worth. It is the count of accounts. Most salaried investors in their forties have between fifteen and thirty separate accounts across banks, brokers, and registrars. That is a lot of places for money to hide. **What goes wrong here:** you list the big mutual fund folio and forget the ₹18,000 in a small-cap fund from 2016. Or you write "HDFC Bank" when you actually hold accounts at both HDFC Bank and HDFC AMC, which are different entities with different claim processes. If your inventory has fewer than ten line items, you have not finished. ## Step 2: Fix nominations on every single account (25 minutes) This is the cheapest, fastest protection available, and it overrides almost everything else. A nomination tells the institution who gets the money without waiting for a will to be probated. Log into each account and check three fields: nominee name, nominee relationship, and the split percentage. - **Mutual funds:** update through the AMC or your registrar. Online, free, takes ten minutes per folio. - **Demat:** your broker's portal has a nomination section. SEBI requires it, so it is easy to find. - **Bank FDs and savings:** branch visit or net banking. Add a joint holder with "either or survivor" where possible. That single change avoids probate entirely for that account. - **PPF:** nomination form at the post office or bank. Frequently never updated. - **Insurance:** nominate under Section 39 of the Insurance Act. This keeps the payout outside your estate. **What goes wrong here:** you nominate your spouse in 2011, get divorced, remarry, and never update it. Or you name one child and not the other, which turns a grieving family into a litigating one. Or you nominate a minor without naming a guardian, and the claim stalls for years. Check the date on every nomination. If it predates your current life, redo it. ## Step 3: Write a will, even a simple one (30 minutes plus registration) A nomination handles the account. A will handles everything else, and it is the only document that lets you decide who gets what instead of leaving it to the Succession Act. You have three realistic options in India: 1. **Handwritten will on plain paper.** Legal, valid, costs nothing. Must be signed by you and witnessed by two people. Highest risk of being challenged or lost. 2. **Lawyer-drafted will.** ₹5,000 to ₹25,000 depending on complexity. Clearer language, fewer ambiguities. 3. **Registered will.** Same drafting cost plus ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 in stamp duty and registration. Registration is not mandatory, but it makes the document much harder to dispute. Keep the original somewhere your executor can reach it. A bank locker defeats the purpose if nobody else has access. Tell at least two people where it is. **What goes wrong here:** you write a will, then buy a new flat, and never update it. Or you name an executor who dies first. Or the will references "my mutual funds" without naming the registrar, and your family spends eight months proving which folios you meant. Review the will every time your asset list changes by more than 20%. ## Step 4: Write the one-page letter nobody wants to write (10 minutes) This is not the will. It is a plain letter, addressed to your spouse or eldest child, that says: here is the spreadsheet, here is the locker key, here is the name and number of my CA, here is my broker's relationship manager, here is the password manager. Store it with the will. Update it yearly. This single page is what actually prevents lost assets. Institutions release money to people who can prove they are entitled to it. They cannot release money to people who do not know the money exists. ## Our take If you do one thing this month, do the nominations. They are free, they take an afternoon, and they bypass probate for most retail accounts. Zerodha, Groww, ICICI Direct, and every other broker now push you through a nomination flow at signup, so check whether you actually completed it or just clicked past it. For the will, use a local lawyer over an online template if you own property or have children from a previous marriage. The ₹15,000 you spend now saves your family a decade of paperwork. If you have nothing but a salary account and one mutual fund, a handwritten will plus correct nominations is honestly enough. And do not use a bank locker for the original will. That is the single most common way families lose access to the document that was supposed to help them. ## FAQ **Does a nomination override my will?** For most financial assets, yes. The nominee receives the money as a trustee for the legal heirs, but in practice the nominee gets control. Keep the two documents consistent or you create a dispute. **How long does probate take in India?** For a contested will, two to five years. For an uncontested one in a metro court, six to eighteen months. This is exactly why nominations and joint holdings matter so much. **What happens to unclaimed mutual fund units?** After three years of no contact, AMCs report the folio to the [Investor Education and Protection Fund](/finance/blog/money-market-mutual-funds-safe-haven-for-your-cash-in-2026). You can still claim it, but the process takes months and requires proof of the original investor's death.

How to Invest in Stocks for Beginners: Estate Planning

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