Japan's Will Gap: 96% of Adults Over 50 Have No Will — Even Though 63% Say They Should

Only about 3.6% of Japanese adults over 50 have actually written a will, even though roughly 63% of them say a will is a good idea — and only about one in ten estates is settled with a will in place at all. That is the central finding of two national surveys released around Japan's "Good Will Day" (November 15): the *Will Yearbook 2025* from the law firm Authense, which polled 1,102 adults aged 50 and over, and the *Will Report 2024*, which found that just 10.4% of people who had been through a parent's inheritance reported that a will existed. Japan may be the world's most end-of-life-aware society — and it is still leaving 96% of its estates to improvisation.

What did the surveys actually find?

The Will Yearbook 2025 draws the clearest picture of the intention–action gap. Among respondents 50 and older, about 63% held a positive view of writing a will — citing peace of mind and sparing their family difficult procedures — yet only 3.6% had created one. Intentions were barely stronger: 5.3% said they definitely planned to write a will, and about 26% said they probably would. The top reasons given by the 709 respondents with no plans at all were disarmingly human: "my assets are small" (22.5%) and "I'm still healthy" (18.9%).

The Will Report 2024 adds the view from the other side — from people who had already inherited. Only 10.4% of them said a will had existed. But of that minority, 90.9% said having the will was valuable. Nobody who found a will wished it away; nearly everyone who found one was grateful. And the desire flows upward as well as downward: among people in their 50s and 60s whose parents are still alive, 38.2% said they *want* their parents to write a will.

Why do wills matter so much in Japan specifically?

Because Japanese inheritance law gives a will unusual power. Without a will, an estate defaults to statutory shares under the Civil Code and must be divided by a formal agreement of all heirs — the *isan bunkatsu kyōgi* — a negotiation that freezes bank accounts, stalls property sales, and regularly turns grief into litigation between siblings. A valid will bypasses the negotiation entirely.

Yet even the wills that exist fail at a surprising rate. The *National Inheritance Survey 2024* by Lurian, which polled 6,850 adults nationwide (including 1,065 with inheritance experience), found that 14.6% of the wills discovered had been ruled invalid at the court-supervised probate review known as *kennin* — most often a handwritten will that missed a formal requirement. The same survey found that where a will existed, families engaged a professional to run the procedures 88.6% of the time, against 62.8% where there was none: a will doesn't just state wishes, it makes the whole settlement faster and cheaper.

Is the tide turning?

Slowly, and the direction is clear. The Japan Federation of Notaries reports that notarised wills (*kōsei shōsho yuigon*) reached 128,378 nationwide in 2024 — a record, up from 97,700 in 2020 and the seventh consecutive year above 100,000. A 2026 industry survey by Ii Sōzoku found that more than 90% of estates it handled still had no will — but among those that did, notarised wills now outnumber handwritten ones roughly 1.5 to 1, suggesting that the people who do act are choosing the stronger, dispute-resistant form.

The awareness machinery is all in place: Japan has a national Good Will Day, a booming shukatsu (end-of-life planning) industry, and — as the Let's Ending Note Survey 2026 showed — 43% of people in their 50s and 60s have now started a personal ending note. What is missing is the step from *intention* to *instrument*: the ending note records the life, but only the will directs the estate. A population that has embraced the notebook is still hesitating at the notary's desk.

What does this mean for families — in Japan and everywhere else?

The Japanese numbers are simply the most honestly measured version of a universal pattern. The reasons people give — "my assets are small", "I'm still healthy" — are exactly the reasons their families will later stand in a bank branch with a death certificate and no idea which of five institutions holds the account. Small estates are the ones least able to afford a family dispute; "still healthy" is the only state in which a will can ever be written.

The practical reading of the data is threefold. First, a will is worth writing at any asset level — the Will Report's 90.9% gratitude figure among inheritors is the closest thing to a controlled experiment the subject allows. Second, form matters: a record 14.6% invalidity rate for discovered wills means "write it properly or notarise it" is not legal pedantry, it is the difference between the document working and not. Third, the will is only half the system — the 9 in 10 estates with no will also had no map: no list of accounts, no record of debts, no instructions. The families who cope best have both the legal instrument and the practical one.

That second instrument is what WiseEnding's My World is built to be: the living map of accounts, debts, documents and wishes, kept in a zero-knowledge vault only you can read, with the Legacy Heartbeat releasing it to the people you chose when the time comes — in Japan, and everywhere else a family would otherwise be left searching. Ninety-six percent of Japan is improvising. The other four percent decided not to.