Will advice

[Clitheroekid]

If the person insists on named charities why not leave each of them a percentage of the net proceeds.

For the reasons stated in the OP's earlier post, namely the disgustingly aggressive attitude of many large charities and their expensive solicitors to extract every last penny from the estate.

I have dealt with many such estates. The big national charities have some form of watching brief at the Probate Registry, looking out for any legacies in newly probated Wills. When they find one they will write to the executors or their solicitors demanding to know when they'll get paid.

It's not a problem if they've been left a fixed sum, as there’s nothing they can do about it, but when they’re a residuary beneficiary - i.e. they've been left a share of what's left - they can be incredibly aggressive, sending out long questionnaires to the executors.

I've had cases where - without the slightest justification - they have demanded details of the selling strategy for a house in the estate, including which agents were consulted, why a specific offer was accepted, why the executors didn't haggle the amount of the agents' commission down etc.

If there were securities in the estate they will ask why they were sold on a date that subsequently turned out to be a low point in the trading range, and what advice was obtained from stockbrokers.

They will also query expenses incurred during the administration, including, inevitably, the solicitors' bill. They may ask the executors whether they shopped around to get the cheapest quote and if they didn't they'll suggest that the solicitors should accept a reduction in their bill.

From this side of the fence you see a completely different side to the public face of these charities. They obviously need to maximise their income to cover their huge marketing costs, their swish central London offices and their six figure staff salaries, but their behaviour is sometimes quite shocking.

Ironically, the cost of dealing with all these enquiries often adds to the expense of administering the estate and means they actually end up receiving less than they would have done.

It's such a contrast when dealing with the small, local charities. I always recommend people making Wills to give to these rather than - or at least as well as - the big nationals. They are invariably run on a shoestring budget, often staffed mainly by volunteers and a legacy really means a lot to them. They are genuinely delighted to receive it, and receiving their thanks and explanations of how the money will be used to good effect is one of the most pleasant aspects of the job.

[kiloran]

For the reasons stated in the OP's earlier post, namely the disgustingly aggressive attitude of many large charities and their expensive solicitors to extract every last penny from the estate.

I have dealt with many such estates. The big national charities have some form of watching brief at the Probate Registry, looking out for any legacies in newly probated Wills. When they find one they will write to the executors or their solicitors demanding to know when they'll get paid.

It's not a problem if they've been left a fixed sum, as there’s nothing they can do about it, but when they’re a residuary beneficiary - i.e. they've been left a share of what's left - they can be incredibly aggressive, sending out long questionnaires to the executors.

That is seriously depressing, CK.
I have a few relatively local charities in my will, and hope that they will not act so shamefully.

Just in case, would it be possible to make the bequest conditional on them not querying the amount or the process followed by the executors?

--kiloran

[richfool]

What about simply including a request in, or with, the will that the Executors pass an amount (and suggest the amount) to each of the listed charities, and go on to say, subject to there being adequate funds available after the main behests have been paid out and make the charity donations at the discretion of the Executors.

[Lootman]

would it be possible to make the bequest conditional on them not querying the amount or the process followed by the executors?

I don't see why a Will cannot contain a conditional clause, where a bequest is only valid if the recipient behaves in a certain way, or perhaps doesn't do a certain thing. After all, bequests can be made dependent on whether someone is married, or has children, or is above a certain age, and so on.

I like it!

[scottnsilky]

Thank you tractorian, for starting this thread, and highlighting the possible problems, it is exactly the situation I am in. My solicitor did mention how unpleasant charities can be when several are bequeathed legacies as a percentage value, but she said it in an offhand way, and I never gave it much thought. Obviously I don't want to drop my executrix in this sort of a mess, so I will have words with my solicitor, and my niece is also a solicitor, two heads are better than one.

dp

[sg31]

Thank you tractorian, for starting this thread, and highlighting the possible problems, it is exactly the situation I am in. My solicitor did mention how unpleasant charities can be when several are bequeathed legacies as a percentage value, but she said it in an offhand way, and I never gave it much thought. Obviously I don't want to drop my executrix in this sort of a mess, so I will have words with my solicitor, and my niece is also a solicitor, two heads are better than one.

dp

I'll second the thanks.

My wife and I don't have children, the only 'next generation' people are my 2 nephews. One is a wastrel with an objectionable wife neither have jobs or any desire to get one. The other has a dead end job, no ambition and just lives for loose women and heavy drinking, he's now in his mid thirties and going nowhere.

As far as I'm concerned I've no one else to leave my money to so they are welcome to what is left after I'm gone. My wife refuses to leave a penny to them and wants to leave her estate to charity. Therein lies the problem. We need to rewrite our wills urgently but until my wife makes up her mind exactly what to do we are at an impasse.

I've read many dire warnings on this board over the years (TMF & TLF) about the perils of leaving estates to charity. Ours will substantial so I presume the problems caused by the charities will be likewise.

I've shown CK's post above to my wife and finally I think the penny has dropped. Thanks to CK, the OP and all other posters for another very educational thread.

[Chrysalis]

Yes we are in the same position. At the moment we have charities as residual beneficiaries (actually in the same position as poster above, I have family to leave my half to but OH wants to leave his to charity).
I’m still not completely clear as to the best way to proceed. I like the idea of a list of charities in a side letter, leaving some discretion to the executors.
I’m not sure however how we get over the pecuniary amount vs residual. Do we need to state a fixed amount to charity? What if that is too much (more than the residual) or too little (so we leave more than we’d like to the residual beneficiaries).
I know we need to be guided by our solicitor but some further pointers would be useful.

[Dod101]

Yes we are in the same position. At the moment we have charities as residual beneficiaries (actually in the same position as poster above, I have family to leave my half to but OH wants to leave his to charity).
I’m still not completely clear as to the best way to proceed. I like the idea of a list of charities in a side letter, leaving some discretion to the executors.
I’m not sure however how we get over the pecuniary amount vs residual. Do we need to state a fixed amount to charity? What if that is too much (more than the residual) or too little (so we leave more than we’d like to the residual beneficiaries).
I know we need to be guided by our solicitor but some further pointers would be useful.

Whatever you do do not leave a proportion to each named charity otherwise you risk leaving your executors to deal with all the charities so I would leave a fixed amount to them all except maybe one to which you could leave any residue, but maybe better to leave the residue to a relative, even if you do not like the person very much!

Of course in the meantime give away some assets of you can afford it; otherwise do your best to spend it!

Dod

[Clitheroekid]

One possible way of dealing with the problem is to leave your estate to trustees and create a form of discretionary trust, accompanied by a letter of wishes.

What your Will would effectively say is "I give my estate to my executors, Tom and Mary, on trust to distribute it to the following charities, A, B and C, as they think fit."

The accompanying letter of wishes would say, "Dear Tom and Mary, although I've given you complete discretion as to which of the charities on the list you want to benefit and how much (if any) each of them should receive, I'd actually like half my estate to go to charity A and a quarter each to go to charities B and C".

The attraction of this is that none of the recipient charities has any legal right to receive anything. If, in practice, they receive a cheque for £265,897.65, being the net amount of a quarter share after all the estate expenses have been paid they can't ask to see the estate accounts and they can't criticise the executors in any way at all. They can just humbly say "Thank you very much", which they should be doing anyway.

Another advantage is that the letter of wishes can be changed from time to time as the testator changes their views as to the merits or demerits of various individual charities without having to change the Will itself.

[Dod101]

Thanks for that CK. That sounds such a good idea that it seems surprising that it is not widely promoted. It certainly seems to get around the problem of leaving the residue for charities and having them on the backs of the Executors. Are there any negatives except of course that the Trustees might ignore the wishes set out in the letter.

Dod

[hiriskpaul]

One possible way of dealing with the problem is to leave your estate to trustees and create a form of discretionary trust, accompanied by a letter of wishes.

What your Will would effectively say is "I give my estate to my executors, Tom and Mary, on trust to distribute it to the following charities, A, B and C, as they think fit."

The accompanying letter of wishes would say, "Dear Tom and Mary, although I've given you complete discretion as to which of the charities on the list you want to benefit and how much (if any) each of them should receive, I'd actually like half my estate to go to charity A and a quarter each to go to charities B and C".

The attraction of this is that none of the recipient charities has any legal right to receive anything. If, in practice, they receive a cheque for £265,897.65, being the net amount of a quarter share after all the estate expenses have been paid they can't ask to see the estate accounts and they can't criticise the executors in any way at all. They can just humbly say "Thank you very much", which they should be doing anyway.

Another advantage is that the letter of wishes can be changed from time to time as the testator changes their views as to the merits or demerits of various individual charities without having to change the Will itself.

Good suggestion. My only question is whether the estate would still qualify for a reduction in the IHT rate this way?

[9873210]

If you intend to give it all to charity can you name a charity as the executor, rather than inconveniencing your friends?

Can you bequest a specific account rather than a specific sum? E.g. "To the Home For Wayward Unicorns my savings account #ABCD at the Rainbow Bank."

[Lootman]

Can you bequest a specific account rather than a specific sum? E.g. "To the Home For Wayward Unicorns my savings account #ABCD at the Rainbow Bank."

Yes you can, and I have suggested this before here when similar questions have arisen.

So to my cousin Nigel I leave the account N at NatWest

To my cousin Bella I leave the account B at Barclays.

To the charity Help the Aged I leave account H at the Halifax.

This has the advantage that you can move money around to add to one bequest and take from another without changing your Will.

[Clitheroekid]

If you intend to give it all to charity can you name a charity as the executor, rather than inconveniencing your friends?

Yes, it’s possible to do so, but unless the charity is a trust corporation they can’t apply for probate themselves. Even those who could would normally outsource the work to their (usually very expensive) solicitors.

The net effect would usually be that the legal bill would be much higher than normal, so the charity would receive less.

If you have difficulty finding friends willing to act a little sweetener can often be effective. It’s perfectly possible to appoint friends as executors but reward them handsomely for their efforts. It’s quite often the case that a Will appoints executors with a legacy to them conditional upon them accepting the appointment.

Alternatively, if you didn’t want to appoint friends at all you could always appoint a local firm of solicitors or accountants as the executors. They would obviously charge for the work, but a local firm would generally be a lot less expensive than one of the firms used by charities.

Can you bequest a specific account rather than a specific sum? E.g. "To the Home For Wayward Unicorns my savings account #ABCD at the Rainbow Bank."

Again, this is perfectly possible, but it’s something I would strongly recommend clients not to do. This is because, particularly these days, people change their bank accounts far more regularly than they used to. It’s extremely easy 15 or 20 years after making your Will to have completely forgotten that you left your Barclays account to Fred when you close it and move to Monzo, Starling etc.

It’s also possible that, particularly if you bank with one of the new banks, that it will no longer exist at the date of your death, either because it’s ceased trading or because it’s been taken over by another bank. This could obviously lead to expensive legal arguments, which is excellent news for lawyers but not for the disinherited beneficiary.

[sg31]

These days most of my savings accounts have to be moved each year. Bonus interest period expires and you can only access the next one by opening a new account. 'Issue 18 has closed' you need to sign up to whichever 'new' issue is now available.

Other than that some banks decide they don't want to be at the top of the interest tables and others are desperate for your money.

It makes life more complicated, I'd be happy to stay with one bank for everything but even that's not possible with the FSCS limits.

Moderator Message:
Can we not divert off-topic any further please? This topic is about a specific query related to a will. Discussion of savings accounts is off-topic. Thanks. (chas49)

[pochisoldi]

These days most of my savings accounts have to be moved each year. Bonus interest period expires and you can only access the next one by opening a new account. 'Issue 18 has closed' you need to sign up to whichever 'new' issue is now available.

Other than that some banks decide they don't want to be at the top of the interest tables and others are desperate for your money.

It makes life more complicated, I'd be happy to stay with one bank for everything but even that's not possible with the FSCS limits.

To steer thing back to Legal Issues, bequeathing the contents of a specific account is risky* and could result in the beneficiary receiving nothing if that account no longer exists, or if the executor is unable to correlate the description in the will with the current name (e.g. Anytown BS SuperDuperRainyDaySaver, which got renamed 10 years later to "Anytown BS Easy Saver".

*"Risky" meaning there is a risk that the will may not deliver the desired outcome.

[Lootman]

These days most of my savings accounts have to be moved each year. Bonus interest period expires and you can only access the next one by opening a new account. 'Issue 18 has closed' you need to sign up to whichever 'new' issue is now available.

To steer thing back to Legal Issues, bequeathing the contents of a specific account is risky* and could result in the beneficiary receiving nothing if that account no longer exists, or if the executor is unable to correlate the description in the will with the current name (e.g. Anytown BS SuperDuperRainyDaySaver, which got renamed 10 years later to "Anytown BS Easy Saver".

*"Risky" meaning there is a risk that the will may not deliver the desired outcome.

I think the risk is overstated. If you had walked down the High Street of any town in England 40 years ago, you would have seen Lloyds, NatWest and Barclays, much as you would today. The only change in the "Big Four" was Midland, which became HSBC - something that any executor could determine in a few minutes.

The building societies as was then have changed a lot, although Nationwide is still around, and Halifax is still recognisable. Abbey National becoming Santander is again easily discovered.

So by choosing the mainstream institutions and, where necessary, providing notes to the executor, the risk would be minimal. And the flexibility of being able to dynamically change your bequests is valuable.

I have had the same bank account for 30 years. In that time I have had 4 wills!

[stewamax]

One possible way of dealing with the problem is to leave your estate to trustees and create a form of discretionary trust, accompanied by a letter of wishes.What your Will would effectively say is "I give my estate to my executors, Tom and Mary, on trust to distribute it to the following charities, A, B and C, as they think fit."

Excellent idea. One virtue is (presumably) that the 'letter of wishes' is not part of the probate process and is thus not published for big-charity lawyers to get their hungry teeth into.
And, in general, it could be a simple way to prevent legal arguments between stroppy beneficiaries or challenges to the Will ("He said I was to get half the house, but in the Will he has left two-thirds to nephew Fred"...). The trustees would need to field some flak, ameliorated perhaps by a legacy, but would have no legal duty to disclose to the beneficiaries what distribution of trust assets they made: like the charities they would just get a cheque.

[scrumpyjack]

I was a trustee for 5 years of a charity with a large endowment and our role was to decide which local charities to give money to and for what. Other trustees had a lot of experience of the large charities and dreadful stories of their wasteful spending on overheads. We therefore would only support charities run by volunteers doing sensible things. I would never leave money to the likes of cancer research. My daughter worked for them briefly and they had 5 expensive offices in the West end alone.

[Wuffle]

Is there a reason why the charitable donations cannot be made before the passing?
Then, on passing, give to someone you actually like rather than agonising over donations to questionable relatives?

I say this having recently made mirrored wills with my other half (not married, no kids) with charities as ultimate beneficiaries.
It was a 'holding pattern' in a panic as the previous generation, who would be our next of kin, demonstrated a worrying level of talent to sort out our business if anything untoward happened.
I am a bit torn about the unsavoury aspects of charitable donations having seen the work up close in terminal cancer care recently.
Would it be naive to suggest that a direct donation, with no requirement for legal intervention, made the charities pay a nurse rather than a lawyer?