Conditions in a will

[Hakunatomato]

DH and I looking to get our wills done. Total estate including house and investments just under a million.

We want to leave around £10k to a niece and nephew, and BIL, who will be appointed executor we will leave £50k in recognition of having to sort out house sale etc. The rest of the estate we want to leave between a local hospice, and the dogs trust.

I have heard of people who have left very large bequests to charity, and once the charity is notified of this, they get quite brutal and put pressure on the executors to force through house sale and finalise things as quickly as possible so they can get their money, which is understandable as charities are cash strapped.

We would like to give BIL time to properly clear the house, distribute small things to people (with very low/value, apart from sentimental) and put the house on the market.

Is there any way we can instruct this to be done with no pressure from the charities and in his own time, say 6 months to a year? Has anybody written this into their will?

if your nieces and nephews mean so little to you then just don’t give them anything, instead of a token amount

It's general advice from the legal profession to leave a small legacy to any family member who you feel may dispute the will. It proves that you hadn't forgotten them and is a clear statement of what you want to leave them. Makes it very difficult for them to contest your will. It's probably not absolutely required when it comes to non dependents such as nieces and nephews, but the deceased may well have read it somewhere and thought it makes sense just to be on the safe side.

Anyway several thousand isn't a "token amount" - it may not pay for uni fees or a house deposit, but it would buy a decent car or a holiday.

It says a lot about a persons character if they would rather give all their money to a faceless charity than have any family or friends they are close enough to give it to.

Why would you leave all that to charities when you have family you could leave it to. That amount of money could be life changing for them. Why would you not want to help them after you've gone. Leaving your Niece & Nephew £10K & donating the rest is a bit of a kick in the teeth to them & suggests you think more of those you don't even know, be it cats, dogs or whatever than you do about your own flesh & blood. Also asking your BUL to sort it all & only leaving a fraction of your wealth to him isn't that fair either. I understand it's your money to do as you please but personally if I had that kind of money I'd want my family to benefit from it knowing it'd be spent wisely & not leave it to a charity not knowing what it'll being used for.

Again, all depends on your family dynamics. I'd barely recognise my nieces and nephews if I bumped into them on the street. Some families are fragmented, due to emotional or geographical factors (or both). It's probably five years or more since I was in the same room as my nephew - we have no contact and he lives a few hundred miles away. He is basically a stranger. Obviously completely different if you see a lot of your extended family, i.e. meet for special occasions, live close enough to visit regularly, keep in regular contact etc. Different families have different dynamics.

My Mother and Father in Law moved houses once, she "forgot" to tell her brother who continued sending Birthday and Christmas cards to her old house for a couple of years - she thought the reason she'd had no cards was that he'd died! Easy to lose contact, however close you once were, when you live hundreds of miles apart and live separate lives.

But yes, it would be a kick in the teeth if you were actually close to your nephew/niece, saw each other pretty often, kept in good contact, etc., only to get a few thousand when the estate was over a million.

We agree, I think.

If there are no family and no close friends, or family is detested then, sure, no money for them!

Bit the OP cares enough about her family to leave something. So why not leave most of the estate to them?

I can see that if a relation or friend is stinking rich you might want to do something else - like bequeath a special item - but that’s not a usual consideration.

This is unfair.
I will be leaving my entire estate to my children 50/50

But if they predecease me, itll have to go to charity.

There is no other family except distant cousins 12times removed. And I dont currently have any very close friends. Seems sad but I lost three for varied reasons and one died.
I will not give it to the government to waste.

And the cousins I've not seen in 40 years, I'd be hard pressed to recognise them now.
And friends come and go. So I could make my will now and forget about it, but then in that time the friends could have died.
I'll be sure to make a couple of tiny local charities very rich when I go.

Giving to charity also reduces/zeroises the inheritance tax bill which is also often a factor. For people without close family, they're rather it ALL go to charity rather than a lump to HMRC and the balance to very distant relatives.

Some of the messages on here regarding OP not liking niece or nephew are just WOW!! I assume the BIL can refuse to be executor (regardless of amount left) if he doesn’t want to do it. Seriously, you all sound like money-thirsty hounds attacking OP for the amount she wants to leave (which is totally up to him/her by the way). Niece or nephew may not even have a relationship with them! I would not want to be related to you guys!

It doesn't zero it. If you leave 10% of your entire estate (over the IHT threshold) to charity, it reduces IHT by 4%

They subscribe to a probate checking service.

I too have heard of charities being brutal and charging interest which they are apparently legally entitled to do if things take longer to sort.

We would like to give BIL time to properly clear the house, distribute small things to people (with very low/value, apart from sentimental) and put the house on the market.

It's quite a lot of work. Is there a reason you're not leaving the majority to family? It feels sort of sad. Might the money not be very helpful to your niece / nephews future?

I agree with @Spinningmom21 Some of the comments on here are brutal. I think it is completely up to the individual who they leave money to and people have very varying circumstances. Personally I'm happy for HMRC to have their cut and to give some to charity. I'm also happy to be executor for several people including cases where I will get absolutely nothing financially from the will despite loads of work. I guess we are all different.....

Being executor can be a huge amount of work. If I were you I'd get a solicitor to do that and then leave what you would like to brother and nephews/nieces but keep them out of executing.

Fwiw I think mumsnet is massively hypocritical about inheritances, I fully expect to inherit from my parents (if there is money after care fees etc) and would be gutted not to. But I wouldn't expect anything for myself or my kids from my child-free brother and his wife.

My df used to review his will every few years. The vast majority of his estate was left equally to db and me, with a small proportion divided equally amongst the grandchildren. He also left a few bequests to our cousins: his nephew (by blood) and 6 of my mum's nieces and nephews (although she'd died over 12 years ago).

Dh and I had actually had a conversation with him - can't remember if it was last year or the year before - when he asked if he should write the nieces and nephews out as they were now adults, so didn't need it (youngest of the cousins is now 30) and he hadn't been able to see them for years (they live on different continents to us and when mum had her accident and then died a few years later, he'd stopped travelling as much). We said that it would still be a lovely surprise for them.

He died suddenly and unexpectedly last year

We've finally got Confirmation through (Scottish equivalent of Probate) and I had the lovely job of contacting all the cousins to ask for their email and postal addresses, as my dad had left them something, so that the lawyer (who is also executor- the other executor had pre-deceased my dad a few months before: one of the things he was about to address) could get in contact with them. Once they replied, I told them "it's not a lot but it will be a nice treat to remember my dad by". I'll leave it to the lawyer to tell them how much.

They've been, each of them, delighted that they'd been thought of I know they're going to be even more delighted when they find out how much it is One of them said she'd buy a bottle of whisky as when she'd visited my dad on a Round the World Trip when she was 18, he'd taken her to a distillery, but hadn't liked whisky then - and he'd told her she would grow into it - which she has. She doesn't know she'll be able to buy many bottles of whisky

Another cousin was so distrustful of my message that she contacted her mum for my personal number (we're only FB friends) as she thought I'd been hacked I can understand her suspicions - but I managed to convince her it really was me!

I suppose what I'm saying is two things: one the importance of regularly reviewing a will and the other, the pleasure that you can give to others just for being thought of.

It can zeroise under the right circumstances with the right forward planning. Some components of an inheritance can be exempt from IHT, so get the will planning right, it's not rocket to zeroise the IHT bill.

Any charitable donation comes off the estate before IHT calculated, so if your estate is, say, £326,000 and IHT would otherwise be 40% on the £1,000 over the exemption, you can pay £1k to charity which reduces your estate to £325k, no IHT due. Charity gets £1k which saves £400 IHT meaning beneficiary is only "down" by £600.

If your estate is £1m, but £325k is the exemption and £650k is exempt business property, then only £25K is liable to IHT. Make a donation of £25k and there's no IHT due.

the 4% rate reduction for IHT is only part of the planning around charity donations upon death.

If your estate is £1m, but £325k is the exemption and £650k is exempt business property, then only £25K is liable to IHT. Make a donation of £25k and there's no IHT due

Surely, that's unusual? Who has 'exempt business property' in the sort of scenarios we are talking about on this thread. No one has mentioned a business being part of will planning on here.

I am only going by our experience. There was no 'exempt business property' and yes IHT was reduced to 36% because of numerous charitable donations within a mixed residue will, but that was it. And my co-executor was a tax planning consultant so knew his onions.

Gifts to charity are exempt from IHT so if you give 100% of your £1 million estate to charity then there is no IHT.

Yes of course. Any amount in a will left to charity is exempt from IHT

The story of the cousin who came to like whisky is so lovely!

Some of the other stories are horrific. Hopefully OP is mulling it all over.

And that was entirely their prerogative, it was their money. We will likely have quite a large estate when we die, not including the inheritance I will get from my parents and what we don't spend, will all go to charity. Partner has 2 nephews but he would rather leave the money to charities that help animals and I am 💯 in agreement.

Exactly. We are child free and make the most money by far when it comes to sisters and brothers in law but we will not be leaving anything for their kids, that's not our job or something we have even given a second thought to. I would be pretty shocked if they expected it too, esp since husband's nephew is lazy AF and is doing nothing with his life.