“No one gets out of here alive!” – I think we’re all familiar with the statement. At one point, all of us will die. But, one might think, “what will happen to my stocks when I die? Can they be part of my will? And who takes them if I have no inheritors?”

Well, first of all, stocks are possessions, so they can be part of your will. So when you die, your inheritor(s) (according to your will), will be able to smoothly acquire the stocks from your broker.

Now, if you don’t have a will, then your stocks will be distributed to your inheritors according to the law. Your inheritor(s) can send your death certificate to your broker along with all the legal documents (entitling them to inherit your stocks). Your broker will then forward it to all the companies that you have stocks with, and these companies will then reassign your shares to your inheritor(s).

If you don’t have any inheritors (which is very unlikely), then your stocks will be assigned to either your state or to the federal government (they won’t be given back to the issuing company). But this will be a very lengthy process and most likely you will end up having inheritors that you have probably never met in your whole life (inheritors tend to smell the money even when they’re thousands of miles away). Additionally, keep in mind that if you died while carrying any debt, then all your possessions might be sold in order to settle all your debts.

It’s amazing that you work all your life to accumulate a great wealth (you trade stocks, real estate, you name it!), and then you die, and you take not a single penny with you!

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