Prince Philip's will to be secret for 90 years

[HotChoc10]

'to protect the Queen's dignity,' apparently..

Why the secrecy do you think?

This is silly, its no ones business but their own. The public doesnt have a right to know, nor does it necessarily mean that there is anything to hide - illegitimate children, mistresses etc. Really ridiculous.

@Lobelia123

This is silly, its no ones business but their own. The public doesnt have a right to know, nor does it necessarily mean that there is anything to hide - illegitimate children, mistresses etc. Really ridiculous.

If that's the case why is everyone else's Will publicly available for £1.50 a pop?

That’s not fair…I’ll be dead by the time it comes out.

@DDUW

The Norman Baker book is a complete and utter eye opener.
Just one more thing the RF do that is wrong....seal their wills.
Along with other tax dodging and avoidance of the laws we abide by.

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785904914/?psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it&coliid=I1EYDI01HF77QE&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&colid=1COE248SZKUUR

This is the book. There are posters on royal threads who I would love if they read it. It's not an opinion piece. It's factual

@LadyEloise1

"To protect the Queen's dignity."

That sounds odd.

Is it a standard old-fashioned term which is usually used in this context?

If anyone is interested, the written decision to seal Prince Phillip’s will has now been published. The matter was considered by the President of the Family Division of the High Court. He made it clear that he himself hasn’t seen the contents of the will, but made the decision based on public interest principles.

In summary he said: -

*While the default position since the 1850s is that wills are published, in practice anyone can seek an order to prevent this, on the basis that it would be inappropriate or undesirable for it to be made publicly available.

*There are several public policy reasons for this default position, including preventing fraud, allowing beneficiaries to be traced, notifying creditors of someone’s death, and allowing claims in relation to the will to be made (someone may claim they have a later valid will, or that they should have been a beneficiary but were unfairly cut out). None of these however really apply to senior royal family members.

*The President accepted that whilst from birth the sovereign has an extensive public persona, they are also a private individual. The will of the sovereign’s consort, children or other close family members, will be a genuinely private document, which is not at all to do with the public role of either the sovereign or the deceased. There is accordingly a public interest in protecting the private rights of the sovereign.

*Whilst there may be considerable public curiosity as to the private arrangements that a member of the Royal Family may choose to make in their will, there is no true public interest in the public knowing this wholly private information. The media interest in this respect is commercial.

It was the President himself who suggested that there be a long-stop date after which applications can be made for wills to be unsealed, and he held 90 years to be sufficient. He also pointed out that he has custody of a safe containing 30 royal wills, dating back to Queen Mary’s brother Francis!

www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-Will-of-His-late-Royal-Highness-The-Prince-Philip-Duke-of-Edinburgh.pdf

Scarby 9, I hope he did leave her his second best bed (I feel sure someone else once did that, now, who could it have been?).

I also hope he left his second best cricket bat to the M.C.C., unless he already gave it to them.

All that waffle but still sealing Wills for reasons beyond me

Because the public policy reasons for making wills public really don’t apply to people who live so much of their lives in public, and because despite the fact they are royal they still have a right to a private life.

If I recall correctly you were deeply unhappy with newspapers publishing royal children’s birth certificates, Roussette - surely you can see a will has far more private information in it that a statement of a child’s name date and time of birth? (Prince Phillip’s death certificate has been made publicly available, by the way).

@DDUW

We do. It’s just such a faff nobody would bother

How would one go about this? I have never read anything indicating that it is possible for an ordinary member of the public to prevent their will from being publicly available.

For future reference, should you wish to do so you (or your probate solicitor) can apply to the Family Division of the High Court under rule 58 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987 for an order that it is undesirable or inapparoariate that the will in question be open to inspection.

Amazes me how many people on these threads absolutely refuse to believe that any of the royals (except for the press office-approved “baddies” in the family) could possibly have done anything as morally repugnant as had affairs / illegitimate children / any other dodgy shit.

So naive. Like this iteration would be any different from the previous generations, whose shenanigans are in school history books.

I can’t think why you would think we think that Leadbetter - everyone knows that three of the Queen’s children’s marriages broke up due to adultery after all!

The Belgian King has also recently acknowledged an illegitimate half sister too, who has started taking up some royal duties. So no, not naive - but also not credulous enough to believe every single piece of gossip peddled on twitter or in the press about them either.

@upinaballoon

Scarby 9, I hope he did leave her his second best bed (I feel sure someone else once did that, now, who could it have been?).

I also hope he left his second best cricket bat to the M.C.C., unless he already gave it to them.

That was Shakespeare, I think.

In those days the best bed was for guests, so it was really the best bed available.

Serenster
I don't get deeply unhappy about anything on MN. Just the personal attacks I've had from time to time

I certainly wasn't so over birth certificates.

Sealed Wills and no IHT which they could afford. That would be a boost to the economy!

I imagine it is costly and stressful for an ordinary member of the public to seal a Will at what would be a sad time

I just assumed he'd ensured Penny was taken care of.

Hidden wills. Reviews of legislation and amendments to legislation before publication. Refusal to accept legal papers at the gates of the Castle. We should all be thankful that a spirit of honest service and hard work is inculcated in the Royal Family. The consequences of the wrong sort having influence might be adverse.

If they leave any of their estate to anyone other than to the Monarch, inheritance tax is paid, Rousette. The Queen Mother, for example, paid tax on everything in her will other than what was transferred directly to her daughter. Princess Margaret’s family sold a lot of her possessions to pay her inheritance tax bill.

I should imagine he didn't have much to leave.

It will have all gone to charity, I expect.

Everywhere I read Serenster days the opposite to that
Article after article disputing what you say. Sovereign to sovereign with nothing paid

Here's an article on queen mother's will, tax loophole. £20m davedwww.theguardian.com/uk/2002/may/06/queenmother.inheritancetax

Please let's not pretend they are subject to IHT like we are

I'm on a phone and can't link

£20M saved that should say

derxa between £10m and £30m reports say

And passed to the queen avoiding IHT of course

And let's just remember Margaret gave away what she could before she died to avoid IHT.
Like her Mustique property which her son then flogged!

Here’s the official statement from Buckingham Palace about the Queen Mother’s Estate:

www.royal.uk/will-queen-elizabeth-queen-mother

It notes that “Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother has bequeathed her entire estate (which mainly comprises the contents of her houses) to The Queen.

In her will, she asked The Queen to make certain bequests to members of her staff, and these bequests will be subject to Inheritance Tax in the normal way.

The Queen has decided that the most important of Queen Elizabeth's pictures and works of art should be transferred to the Royal Collection”

We can of course argue whether it is appropriate for a sovereign to sovereign transfer to not be subject to inheritance tax, and I suspect it’s unlikely we’ll agree. I would note that very little of what the Queen Mother passed on in her will was actually privately owned - the majority is technically deemed to be held on trust by the Monarch on behalf of the nation. No-one in the UK pays inheritance tax on property they hold as a Trustee, so that’s not an example of special treatment.

As for the transfer of works of art to the Royal Collection (a financially independent Trust, separate from the Queen and which and receives no Government funding or public subsidy) is is not dissimilar to assets being given to the National Trust in lieu of income tax, a fairly common occurrence. As they included works by Faberge and Monet, they would have been fairly valuable in their own right.