Andrew, Sarah & a Royal Lodge question

[MoondustandFairies]

Following some of the news stories about Andrew relinquishing Titles & a more local news story saying that he & his ex wife will continue to live in the Royal Lodge makes me wonder how that can be funded. Can they be made to leave if they can't pay?

It has 7 - or 12? - bedrooms so I expect it requires a bit of mopping & dusting each week - so do A & S also employ staff to maintain the property.

Not sure how old they both are either, maybe close to retirement?? but how do they fund a lifestyle without being propped up by the RF. Which prob won't please William too.
Just my tuppence worth question wondering how non working ex Royals with no marketable skills will pay staff wages & buy groceries.

It wouldn’t be. I would put it on. Meant to say that in my post 🙄 !

Can we only have one?

From recollection, she had set up huge trust funds in her early 90s and spectacularly managed to live more than the requisite 7 years longer. She was personally millions in debt which the queen paid. Her money was safe in the trust funds!

William has just done an interview. Didn’t touch on it.

If you mean the Eugene Levy programme, it's part of a travel series and was filmed in February.

I don’t know why on earth he would comment! How bizarre to think that?

I'm sure William and Kate have daily staff - cleaner, nanny and gardiner etc.

However I can understand William not wanting his kids growing up in the same goldfish bowl where many of the former staff made money from telling stories about his childhood and his parents divorce. Paul Burrell turned it into a 30 year career then there was the Highgrove housekeeper's tell-all book about Charles and Diana's marriage - although I think Charles managed to get the housekeeper's diary banned in the UK.

You're right, it is, TheignT, but no doubt those with the influence will still have whatever money's available - though whether they'll want to spend it on Andrew is open to question

Do you mean the travel programme interview that William filmed in February or the suicide charity interview? I can't think it would be appropriate to bring up Andrew in either.

I wonder if they are still exporting oil, that was there only income I think. Must have a Google.

Looks like they are stilling selling crude oil although there disruptions due to fighting.

It seems so, TheigtnT:

"In 2023, Libya exported $31.3B of Crude Petroleum, making it the 14th largest exporter of Crude Petroleum (out of 150) in the world. During the same year, Crude Petroleum were the most exported product (out of 459) in Libya. In 2023, the main destinations of Libya's Crude Petroleum exports were: Italy ($6.51B), Germany ($5.07B), Spain ($2.91B), France ($2.55B), and China ($2.2B)"

https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/crude-petroleum/reporter/lby

Majority of the wealth goes directly to the next monarch which avoids IHT.

It's interesting because each Monarch personally becomes more and more wealthy. Charles's personal fortune is said to be £1.8billion. When he pops off, the bulk of this will be passed to William whose personal fortune is £100million now. Money grows money so I have no doubt William will be worth more than £2billion in the not too distant future.

What interests me is... I know when Monarch dies and heir inherits there is no IHT. I do wonder whether any of them pay what we do when we gift money. Because if you give your children money (more than the £3K p.a. you are allowed to give tax free), you have to live more than 7 years to avoid tax.

So when QE2 paid off VG £12million (it is said this was from her personal fortune) did she pay the necessary IHT on that? Bearing in mind Charles has funded Andrew his security at one point out of his private money, did he pay tax like us on that? There is so much money sloshing around that Charles must give to other members of the family, I bet they don't pay tax like we do.

HMTLQ wasn't the first daughter in history to pay off a parent's debts, and she won't have been the last.

(No, I didn't say that she wouldn't OF been, I said, correctly, that she wouldn't HAVE been.)

You make an interesting point, Lunde.

In the fifties the new queen and her husband went off on a long tour and the children stayed home with Granny and Aunt Margot and nannies, which would have been thought the most sensible thing at the time.

By Diana's day, she took Wills with them when she and Charles went to Australia. It was a much shorter trip and maybe she had had to dig her heels in a bit, but baby went too, and he crawled to the edge of the blanket on the ground and his Daddy called him 'Wills'.

By William's day, he has a wife who probably didn't have a nanny and I can see that they seem to be more hands-on if they can be, and have come-in staff rather than live-in staff. They don't need such a large house if there are fewer live-in staff and maybe the live-out staff like going home to their own places.

You are the first person that I've read, pointing out about the blab-mouths who make a living from telling-a-bit, not really all. Thank you for that thought. I can see that it's a good reason for William not to want too many members of staff there all the time.

I must make time to look up what 'Crawfie' did long ago. Miss Crawford, nanny or teacher to the late Queen?

This is not strictly right. You can give away as much as you like without IHT if it comes out of your income and doesn’t impact your lifestyle. (If you give your child £3k and pay their car insurance of £2k making a total gift of £5k, they don’t pay IHT if you die 2moro. But if you bought them a car for £20k out of your savings and died 2moro, that wld fall within your estate for IHT.)

More likely though is that the royal family’s personal wealth is tied up in trusts on which there is an annual tax charge or an entry/exit charge. Most people’s main asset is their home but the royals don’t seem to own their homes - Charles didn’t own Highgrove.

Charles and William don’t own the duchies that they derive their income from. It’s difficult to know how much their private wealth is.

This is not strictly right. You can give away as much as you like without IHT if it comes out of your income and doesn’t impact your lifestyle.

And that is not right either. And I am going from the dot gov website on IHT.
If I were to give my DC £100,000 and live for another 7 years, it would not be liable to IHT
If I were to give my DC £100,000 and popped my clogs a year after it would be liable for 40% tax. The amount of tax owed decreases on a sliding scale depending on when you die between 0 and 7 years.

Reading your post again, I think we are probably agreeing...

No that’s a different part of the IHT rules. Giving out of surplus income is not part of the 7 year regime, but it does have to be income, not capital. (I’m not saying this is what the royals are doing, I don’t know!)

“From the govt website

You can make regular payments to another person, for example to help with their living costs. There’s no limit to how much you can give tax free, as long as:

• you can afford the payments after meeting your usual living costs
• you pay from your regular monthly income

These are known as ‘normal expenditure out of income’. They can include:

• paying rent for your child
• paying into a savings account for a child under 18
• giving financial support to an elderly relative

If you’re giving gifts to the same person, you can combine ‘normal expenditure out of income’ with any other allowance, except for the small gift allowance. For example, you can give your child a regular payment of £60 a month (a total of £720 a year) as well as using your annual exemption of £3,000 in the same tax year.”

Just to add, an example wld be paying university fees/maintenance for your child. That wouldn’t be caught by IHT. (And that’s one reason why someone might pay their child’s fees.)

Giving out of surplus income is not part of the 7 year regime, but it does have to be income, not capital. (I’m not saying this is what the royals are doing, I don’t know!)

Yes, and this is my point.... supposedly QE2 paid off Andrew's accuser from her own private funds which will be capital. Did she pay IHT on it like the rest of us have to...

How do you know it was capital and not income? The Queen would have had an investment portfolio (her capital) which throws off income - last year the King’s income from the duchy of Lancaster alone was about £26 million.

How do you know it wasn’t paid out of a trust which had Andrew as a beneficiary?

Anyway we don’t know how the Queen paid, but I thgt your original point was gifting anything over £3k was part of your estate for IHT/subject to the 7 yr rule and I was simply pointing out that this isn’t necessarily the case if you gift out of surplus income.

Apologies if I misunderstood.

No misunderstanding.
I am musing about IHT and whether QE2 took £12M from capital and paid the same tax as everyone else
Just musing that's all

Looks like he’s outta there

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/royals/article-15224357/Prince-Andrew-talks-leave-Royal-Lodge.html

Thanks for the link.

Interesting and obviously long overdue but I do wonder who's going to pick up both the compensation tab and that for the repairs apparently needed and ongoing maintenance.

I don't think I need three guesses...

Let’s hope this is true and he ends up somewhere abroad where he can pay for his own rent and security!