Sisters Will

castle96

She is re-writing and wants to 'discuss' with me. I wil be executor. Estate £500 - £1m. She makes a big thing of AIM shares (nearly 2 yrs ago). She has 4 relations. Me and 3 sons. She wants to exclude 1 son for various reasons "I will make sure he gets nothing, by putting in my will that no Deed of Var can take place"

?/

Surely not true? If me and 2 other sons decide to 'give/DofV' other son, whatever we deem, then we can??? TIA

Brie

Well when it gets to that point she'll be dead and you can do what you want with what will then be your money.

(sorry if that sounds a bit blunt)

Sea_Shell

Hmm.

Can wills include clauses that bind the beneficiaries to such terms, which if breeched, forfeit their inheritance?

Or is it just in the movies? 

p00hsticks

Sea_Shell said:

Hmm.

Can wills include clauses that bind the beneficiaries to such terms, which if breeched, forfeit their inheritance?

Or is it just in the movies? 

Well the suggested clause would seem to create some sort of circle...

I give X money unless they intend giving it to Y.....

But if they intend giving it to Y,  X doesn't get the money in the first place....

Even if they could prohibit a deed of variation, I don't see how they could control what X does with an outright inheritance...

Grumpy_chap

The OP should let the sister write the will to reflect whatever the sister wants the will to reflect.  It is not for the OP to influence that in any way.

If the sister proposes that the OP is to be the Executor, then the OP wants to be sure the will is legally valid and sufficiently clear that the wishes can be simply implemented.  The best person to give that advice would be a Solicitor and not the OP. 

Any advice or comment the OP gives may be considered as influencing the sister, and that is not an accusation that the OP wants to be facing.

Stubod

..I would have thought the only way she could "guarantee" none of her money went to the son would be to leave it ALL to charity?

(I assume you also have money of your own in which case if/when you inherit you can keep "her" money but give some of "your" money to the other son if that's what you want?).

Manxman_in_exile

If your sister is planning on doing that I presume she has not taken legal advice.  Tell her to go to a solicitor to make sure it's done properly.

p00hsticks

Stubod said:

..I would have thought the only way she could "guarantee" none of her money went to the son would be to leave it ALL to charity?

Even that won't work if the sister lives in Scotland....

As Manxman says, the sister is best advised to see a solicitor to get what she wants, and as Grumpy-chaps advises, the OP is best keeping out of it

Keep_pedalling

Even if a clause stating no DOV was enforceable, which I don’t believe it is, it would not stop any of the beneficiaries gifting some of their inheritance to the disinherited child. 

Unless she has a terminal illness making a sibling the sole executor is also silly as there is around a 50% chance her executor will die before she does. As others have said she needs to see a solicitor to make her will, especially for an estate of that size.

TBagpuss

I think it would be difficult (though not impossible) to prevent a DoV being made, she would probably have to make the gifts to the other beneficiaries conditional. But she could not then prevent them from making gifts to the other child, although it would be potentially less tax efficient. 

What you can do is -
-encourage her to get proper advice to ensure that the will does what she wants.- which is likely to include ensuring that she provides a side letter and that the solicitors keep very detailed notes as to why she has chosen to exclude him, to enable the estate to defend any Inheritance Act Claims 
- decide whether or not you are willing to act as her executor if she does chose to exclude her son, and if you would feel uncomfortable doing so, tell her so she can chose someone else.
if she does appoint you, you can of course renounce when the time comes, or you could instruct a solicitor to act for the estate, in which case their fees would come out of her estate, and they could field ay unpleasantness from the disinherited son. 

Depending on your relationship with her, and her reasons for wanting to disinherit her son, you could also discuss with her whether that's really what she wants, and encourage her to talk to her solicitor about other choices - for instance, leaving him a smaller amount or even setting up a discretionary trust to limit what he can access and enable gifts to be conditional (obviously this may be more suitable if she's worried about how he'd spend it rather than feeling he has behaved in ways that mans she no longer wants him in her life at all) 

Of course, if you and the other beneficiaries felt that he was unfairly excluded, as well as being able to make gifts to him from your own shares, were he to make a claim under the inheritance act there would be nothing to prevent you rom agreeing to settle that claim, early on...it wouldn't be a deed of variation...

Sea_Shell

Of course, a DoV is only a tax tool.

Absolutely nothing to stop a beneficiary making a gift out of "their own money" once the estate is distributed.