Legacy

georgiasnan

An aunt left a sum of money to a charity in her will but when she died there was no cash to give to the charity after paying for the debts to the council for her nursing home charges. Part of the debt was set against the Aunts former home but the two main beneficiaries paid for the remainder of the debt out of their own funds and are receiving rent from the property to pay themselves back. The charity is now demanding their money, must the property be sold to pay them? Thanks in advance.

Mojisola

georgiasnan said:

An aunt left a sum of money to a charity in her will but when she died there was no cash to give to the charity after paying for the debts to the council for her nursing home charges. Part of the debt was set against the Aunts former home but the two main beneficiaries paid for the remainder of the debt out of their own funds and are receiving rent from the property to pay themselves back. The charity is now demanding their money, must the property be sold to pay them?

If there is no other way to raise the money, then yes.

Savvy_Sue

Mojisola said:

georgiasnan said:

An aunt left a sum of money to a charity in her will but when she died there was no cash to give to the charity after paying for the debts to the council for her nursing home charges. Part of the debt was set against the Aunts former home but the two main beneficiaries paid for the remainder of the debt out of their own funds and are receiving rent from the property to pay themselves back. The charity is now demanding their money, must the property be sold to pay them?

If there is no other way to raise the money, then yes.

It might depend on the precise wording of the will, but I'm going to say somewhere between probably and almost certainly ... 

p00hsticks

As Savvy_Sue, says, it'll depend on the exact wording of the will, but it sounds as if the estate is solvent, and so the charity should get something.

If the wording of the will was something along the lines of 'I leave £x to charity and the rest of my estate to people A and B', then the charity gets £x and anything left over is split between A and B.

If the estate assets (minus expenses) are less than £x then the charity gets as much as possible and A and B get nothing. .

I'm not sure what happens if the will says something like 'I leave my house to A, £x to charity and the residue to B', and there isn't enough cash in the estate to pay the charity - it may be that the house has to be sold and the money raised split between A and the charity in proportion to the value of the property and £x - the people over on the 'Deaths, Funerals and Probate' board might know.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/deaths-funerals-probate 

(If A wanted to keep the property for themselves, then I imagine they could make up the money  to give the charity themselves by effectively buying the property off the estate)