Wills - what worthy charity would you choose?

[LoveRules]

We are getting married and therefore redrafting our wills. We both have children from previous relationships so a little bit complex which we have worked through.

Our will writer has advised that in a worst case improbable scenario it is best to write in who our estates might go to if everyone pre-deceases the owner of the will to avoid being intestate.

I'd like to leave my share to an impoverished but life long friend plus a worthy charity but don't know who to choose. Maybe smile train or a mental health charity but would be interested in who others might choose.

Because OP explicitly said that in the event all beneficiaries pre-deceased them or they all die together.

They could all die in a car crash or a house fire (for example). If they're all dead, they would die intestate. Hence the charity.

Literally in the OP.

Mine would be JDRF - a charity looking for a cure for type 1 diabetes. I would love to make my child’s life by helping to find a cure.

I work in the sector and I would suggest leaving it to a charity that means something to you.
If you have never used a charity maybe think about things that have affected your life so for example family members sickness, mental health etc. Or you might like to give to a children's charity. Have a Google, you can look at the charities commission website for more info on the charity using thier name / reg number.

I'm not sure how much you are going to be leaving, but if you are really interested in finding out more you could attend some of their events.

If it was me (I have worked in both 240mil charities to 5mil) I would leave to a charity whose income was under the 30million mark, as more of an impact would be made by your donation.

RNlI was my first thought!

Research towards curing/ preventing dementia and/ or MND which is also such a cruel disease.

A local, one man band privately run wildlife sanctuary that the RSPCA and other 'big ticket' charities frequently bin off emergency calls to yet never give any help to them from the vast sums of money that people still seem keen to chuck at them.

The only ones that ever seem to show any gratitude when they ask the sanctuary for any help are the police...

Also Papyrus and the Samaritans.

Thank you so much for all of these wise and informative posts. Really helpful.

I like the idea of a smaller charity close to my heart being a beneficiary if we all die together or I'm the sole survivor at age 101.

Helping young people born into challenging circumstances not become homeless would be up there for causes. I used to volunteer for Centrepoint
Also Women's Aid as know what it's like living with an abusive violent man with no escape route.

I think part of the surprise here is why not leave it to other family members? Siblings, parents, cousins? Friend's child you're like an aunt to?

Anyway, intestate isn't such an evil. It doesn't mean the state.

Still, OP has specified she wants to list a charity...

I am splitting between Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors without Borders and the MND Association.

I am splitting between Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors without Borders.

They do amazing work. I worked for them. Not in the field.

An M.E charity and a refugee one.

I'd donate to a local support for bereaved children group having been a bereaved child and also the air ambulance having seen the incredible work they do after an accident near our house. A young man in his 20s is still alive and with his family thanks to the crew who came out to him that night.

I would split it between local charities, the main beneficiary would be a charity which helps survivors of abuse, the second a hedgehog rescue centre run by a woman in her back garden, the third a cat sanctuary and the fourth a group that preserves and improves local woodlands.

I’m splitting my estate between two local cat charities. They will do far more with it than any of the big national charities. It won’t go towards large salaries for a start.

I’m not sure I’d leave it to a charity. I went to the donkey sanctuary recently and was amazed at what I saw to the point I started looking at its finances.
essentially so many people seem to think “fuck Barbara, I’m giving it to the donkeys” it’s unreal.
its a multi million pound empire and as much as i love donkeys….there’s not many of them in the U.K…
anyway, my point being is there’s several directors living it large in Devon/Dorset, where ever it may be.
many charities are the same….can you not leave it to someone who will directly impact their life?

For years, I had thought I would create a will leaving the estate to DC, other relatives and various charities that I was passionate about. My circumstances have changed more recently. I have also had the misfortune to be an executor twice. So I've decided to make my will the very simplest that it can be. To leave 100% to my DC. However, I still care about the charities I support and have decided to continue to make regular donations but to add larger one-off donations while i'm alive. It means I can see who needs help at a particular time, but could stop if eg care costs became too much.

I know nothing about the donkey sanctuary so can't comment on what you saw there, but it's so sad that you would draw the conclusion from your observations about one charity, or even a few charities, that it isn't worth giving to charities at all. Many make such an incredible difference to the lives of the most vulnerable people. It's such a shame when people are so quick to dismiss them, often on the basis of assumptions and/or a lack of understanding about how the sector works.

I admit it was a bit of a generalisation, maybe I should say my issues are with the larger organisations that act as charities but are fundamentally businesses

Shelter. Insecure housing is a massive problem. Most of our wealth comes from our house which has gone up in value a ridiculous amount while we’ve been living here, so it feels appropriate that it should be used to help others with housing.

That's such a good point @Quercus5
I agree with you.
There for the grace of luck/god go I

Two years?

I've just done mum's and from submitting the form to receipt of the copies of the grant was under four weeks. It took c5 months to settle all accounts and sort out IHT. So, 6m in total for the estate to be fully in my hands.

My will leaves a set sum (totally agree about not leaving a % or any kind of share) to CAB, whichever is local to wherever I lived at the time. It's also important to say something like "or a charity with similar aims" in case the one you choose has shut down. But a will writer can help with all that.

Perhaps they don't have wider family members that are close or at all?

I've a sister and OH has a brother - other than each other and our son, that's the only family we have any contact with, and contact with them is pretty limited. In our wills, we've left a fixed sum respectively to them, but the vast bulk of the estate would go to charity (all assuming our son dies before or at the same time as us). Both sister and brother are similar ages to us, both close to retirement age, both already set up with their own mortgage free homes, decent pension schemes, etc - they don't "need" our money and the fixed sums we'd leave them will pay for a very nice cruise or foreign holiday or a new car, they certainly won't need anything for living costs, paying off a mortgage, etc. I'd rather our money go somewhere where it would make more of a difference. We've both got cousins from wider family but all live away and have their own lives and all we do is exchange Christmas cards, so no need to leave them anything in our wills.

For those of us who don’t have kids, either on purpose (like me) or involuntarily, having grandchildren we didn’t know about would be even more of a miracle than the Virgin birth .

I’ve got a legacy to my cat rescue in my will, because I know the money will make a real difference to them, but most of it is currently halved between my niece & nephew. If something happened to them then the cat rescue would more than deserve to be backup legatees.

Through disabilities in our family there are a handful of local smallish charities that are named in our wills for exactly this scenario. I'd go small rather than national because of our experiences.

This. A religious organisation I helped fundraise for was once left a large sum of money but with the stipulation it could only be spent on fancy new robes for the clergy or altar cloths! During Covid, when we were losing so much money due to hall closures etc, it was so frustrating to see this money sitting in the bank but unable to be spent.