10% charity gift giving - how to state amount in a Will

qprjames

My mum has put in her will for 10% of her money to go to charity.

do you think it is better to set this at a set amount - for example if she had 1 million GBP, she could allot 100,000 GBP to be given to chrity.

does having a % cause any issues when settling an estate in the future, or is a set figure a better idea?

[Deleted User]

A percentage has the advantage of meaning that other beneficiaries will still get something, no matter the size of the estate.

unforeseen

A percentage can also cause problems if there are assets to be sold off first as they will want the maximum amount for their percentage
ISTR there have been previous threads where a charity has been given a percentage and it has caused major headaches for executors because they believed the house selling price was too low. 

[Deleted User]

Does ‘money’ mean cash only? I have seen wills where a percentage of monies in the various bank accounts is set aside for charity. Can this not be stipulated?

pjread

with a £1m+ estate I'd be inclined to chat to a solicitor, but something clear like "10% of liquid assets", "10% of my cash balances" or "10% of the value of my shareholdings in publicly listed companies" all sound relatively straightforward. 

The difficulty with fixed values is whether they make sense at the time of execution, particularly if that is some way off (when that £100k could be the whole estate or 1% of a larger estate, neither of which might be the intended outcome)

Keep_pedalling

10% sounds like part of the reason for doing it is for IHT purposes in which case a fixed amount is not going to work.