I have posted all the details from the relevant Duchy accounts, but it seems you’ve not read them Novella. Or perhaps read but not understood? In case it’s the latter, I’ll explain.
Each year a certain number of people will die in the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall where the deceased left no will, and there are no easily traceable living relatives who might inherit (the rules around that are set by parliament in the Intestacy Act, not the Duchies).
The Duchy then assumes responsibility for the deceased’s property. That will entail in most cases getting the necessary court order allowing it to deal with the property, completing all the necessary paperwork, arranging for properties to be emptied, cleared and sold, and arranging for saleable items to be sold, liquidating any back accounts and investments and then collecting the remaining financial value.
All of that work comes at a cost (the time of the people working on it and the fees of the services that are needed, like court fees etc), as is true with any estate. So, as with any estate, the fees of the administration are deducted from the estate before it is distributed. In the case of bona vacantia, these fees will also include the time that is spent trying to locate any blood relatives.
So, an estate that is worth, say £100k on paper when the person dies may only result in £80k value after the administration is concluded. The Duchies’ accounts are then perfectly clear what happens to that £80k - it gets held in a reserve fund in case any family member does turn up and make a claim. If they do, they are paid out (we know this happens because of the case that’s been talked about in this thread of the son who found out his estranged father had died nine months later, and was paid the value of the Estate when he contacted the Duchy).
Claimants have a long time to make a claim before they will be considered out of time. So the Duchy will hold the money in that reserve for a long time - at the very least six years, more likely ten or twelve years. So each year they will look at the amount in the reserve and assess how much is now considered able to be distributed because, realistically, no claimant will come forward. That amount is then transferred onto the Benevolent Fund in Cornwall, and the other specified locations in the case of Lancaster.
What we see in the accounts then is the amount received each year, and also the amount paid out to its ultimate destination. These don’t correlate - because they are not the same funds. The monies shown in the accounts as coming in 2023 may sit in the reserves for a decade before they are passed on. In that decade, the monies received in 2023 are likely to be reduced as valid claims on them are made. The monies that are shown in the accounts as paid to out to charities in 2023 are not the monies that were received in 2023 - they likely date back to 2013, and possibly older still. So you can’t draw a straight line and say “moneys in don’t match moneys out and we can see the charities are getting next to nothing”. Because you are comparing apples with oranges.