Last week, I had the most uncomfortable conversation with my partner of over 20 years J.
It involved money. It involved love. And it definitely involved drama.
The drama mainly came from me because I was weeping by the end of the discussion with J.
We were at his home and he was making me coffee when he casually informed me he'd asked his law firm colleague Ryan to help draft up his will -- and proceeded to give me a rundown of what he planned to do with his assets.
It was not a conversation I expected. But it was in keeping with J's character who dealt with all matters of life (and death) in a most detached, clinical way.
That's what makes him such a great lawyer and problem solver because, unlike me, he deals with facts and no emotions.
Okay, that's not entirely accurate. J's job deals with -- and plays up or down -- selected facts and he does deal with a lot of emotions from clients, based on all the legal stories he'd shared with me over the two decades.
But I wasn't prepared to have such a talk that morning. All I wanted was a cup of coffee after having spent a romantic night at his place, then walk out for chwee kueh at the nearby Chomp Chomp hawker centre.
"Were they tears of joy," Stanley the sex bunny asked when I updated him this news.
"Or were you crying because you weren't part of the will?"
Will drafting, over the years, has become more common among Singaporeans.
And though J isn't expecting to die anytime soon, he has set out plans to deal with the inevitable.
In our younger days, J would do the same: Chart out plans to save chunks of money in our 20s, start property-buying and investments in our early 30s, crystalise retirement safety nets in our 40s, and draft up LPAs (Lasting Power of Attorney) and wills.
J is the type of person who takes all the romance out of the relationship and replaces it with practicality.
And over the years, I've come to love this aspect of him.
But a discussion of splitting his assets after he dies pains me.
Again, Stanley the sex bunny pointedly wanted to know if it pained be because he would eventually die, or if they money wouldn't come to me.
And he isn't joking.
Case in point, his own family drama.
Stanley isn't exactly poor.
In fact, he's born with a silver spoon in his mouth (just that as he grew up, he took that silver spoon out of his mouth and put in other things).
Not too long ago, his mum passed (God bless her soul, the formidable Mrs Monica Ong).
It was after Mrs Ong's death when Stanley discovered the amount of red tape he had to untangle.
"You'd think it's straightforward -- that the CPF monies of my mum would easily be transferred to the living family members," Stanley said to me. "No. Not at all," he said.
Apparently, if the living hadn't done any CPF nomination (a process that dictates whom the money should go to in the event of that CPF holder's death, it is a rather long road to getting access to that money).
Long story short, Stanley didn't need the money. Nor did he want any part of it.
But when he discovered that his mum's money had gone to not only his dad but also his sister... Stanley blew up.
In all other circumstances, any type of blowing that's related to Stanley is a good and welcome thing. Not this time.
Firstly, Stanley hates his sister. He sometime refers to her as his nemi-sis.
I have no idea why he hates her this much -- the gist of it is, Cindy Ong the firstborn is a money squanderer.
Also, I think Stanley dislikes her because unlike most traditional Chinese families, the Ongs favoured Cindy over Stanley.
Again, I digress.
Stanley was huffing and puffing when he found out he got nothing from his mum.
Truth be told, Mrs Monica Ong didn't have a will. And she didn't have to work. But she did have some CPF money squirrelled away when she worked in her mid-20s.
"Make sure you are in the running for inheritance in your family, Adam," Stanley said to me seriously.
But back to J and his morbid talk on asset distribution.
While I'm heartened that I'm not out of his bequeathing equation, it puts an extra cloud over our relationship.
Because money and love don't always go hand in hand. Well, sometimes they do. But not for me.
If money can split family -- whether it's a dispute over inheritance or in a household business -- then surely it can do damage to relationships too.
"So...," Stanley texted again. "How much are we talking here?"