Who to leave money to in will?

lr1277

If you are not aware, when searching for charities, you can search by location. E.g. village name, town name or county or I suspect region in the search box.

I also use cafonline (charities aid foundation) to search for charities. I find this preferable to the charitiy commission website because it gives a simple graphic on how much money the charity made in the last year in which it filed accounts. So a charity might be listed with an income of '0-999' or 10 million and above. I think all the information on cafonline is sourced from the charity commission website.

This last feature is useful, if you search for all the charities in a particular area.

I also like the feature showing (where accounts have been filed), the amount of income and the amount spent in a given year. I am astounded by the charities spending more than they earned in a given year, but I know they have built up a reserve based on previous years' income and expenditure.

If you search on a general term, say woodland, there are many charities associated with 'woodland'.

One is the Woodland Trust with an income in excess of 10million.

Another is Woodlands Trust with an income upto £10k.

HTH

Edit: to add part about searching for Woodland.

Ediw 2: To add paragraph about income and expenditure

Dustybee

Thanks for all your thoughts. I've had a quick look at the charity commission website, which is exactly what I was looking for for ideas.

TBagpuss

diystarter7 said:

How can one ensure that there will is not overturned if you leave out someone you seriously dislike, EG a member of the family/etc. Recent court cases, high profile ones have dishearted me and I've felt sorry for the persons that left money for others but then it was gifted via court action to someone they certainly did not want to leave a penny to.

1. Get the will professionally wirtten.
2. Tell the solicitor that you want to exclude certian people, and why, They will be able to advice about how this should be recorded (often this might be by way of a separte side letter whoch would only be disclosed if the will is challenged) 
3, Make sure that how you leave things is reasonable - i.e that you have a godd, clear reason for picking the beneficiaries that you do
4. Consider whether you ought to ask your solicitor to arrange a medical witness to cut off any chance of a challenge to your will on capcity grounds 

For example, one of the high profile cases about challenging a will involved a mother who left nothing to her adult daughter, and instead left her estate to charities. She hada no connection to the charity, which IIRC was seen as relevant to the reasonableness of the lack of provision for her daughter

Eqully, if you leve money to people you are close to - friends, chosen family, etc then that's likely to be harder to challenge - a court has to consider the effect on the benficiaries if a challenge is allowed to succeed - it's easier to argue that a large charity won't sufer unduly if their share is cut than to make the same argument about your dear friend Joe Bloggs, or the small local charities you wanted to support for whom your legacy would be a game-changer 

The way in which the disappointed family member acted is also relvant - in a couple of high profile cases the disappointed child had made attempts to mend the relationship.

The reason why you don't want to give them anything and the closeness of the relationship is also relevant -  not leaving anything to (say) siblings or their children is likely to be much harder to challenge or overturn than if you have a spouse or children of your own who you want to exclude. (and if the people you want to exclude are your children , then leaving gifts tograndchildnre instead (and appointment someone other that their parents as the trustees) or a discretionary trust with the grandchildnre and others as benficiaries might be an option to consider.

https://www.georgegreen.co.uk/site/george-green-blog/private-client/adult-child-loses-claim-for-reasonable-financial-provision is an example of an *unsucessful * case

There was also the Ilott case, which got a lot of attention, however the claimant lost most of that she gained, on appeal  (£50K at first instnace, £200,00 on appel, back to £50,000 on further appeal) 

Fianlly , of course, you can give away some of your money while you are alive, and/or spend it on yourselve and the people you do like or the causes you support. 

ShinyStarlight1

I was left some money by a long-standing family friend. I was so touched, and always will be. My mother rejected me on her death bed and let me know she loathed me. This family friend, who had known me all my life, lifted me up from the floor by including me in her Will - I had no idea she had done that but it told me she loved and valued me.

Is there someone in your life you would like to secretly say ‘I value you. I appreciate you’. Being left something in a Will isn’t always about money. It can let the person know they have been cherished.

sevenhills

ShinyStarlight1 said:

Is there someone in your life you would like to secretly say ‘I value you. I appreciate you’. Being left something in a Will isn’t always about money. It can let the person know they have been cherished.

Yes, exactly that.
Also, would you like your home town to be a better place after you have gone?
You could leave money for a bench, a tree, or money for some streets to be cleaned every week or a dirty area cleaned up. Or for all of that, if there is enough.

macman

A large charity such as Cancer Research has a substantial turnover: £668m in 20/21. Do you really think that a salary of £100k is unreasonable for a CEO responsible for an organisation of that scale? Charities of that scale have to be run like businesses because they are ultimately competing against other charities for a limited amount of donations. CEO's capable of doing this well could earn far more in the commercial sector, plus bonuses and share options,so they're unlikely to be doing it just to enrich themselves.

downshifted

macman said:

A large charity such as Cancer Research has a substantial turnover: £668m in 20/21. Do you really think that a salary of £100k is unreasonable for a CEO responsible for an organisation of that scale? Charities of that scale have to be run like businesses because they are ultimately competing against other charities for a limited amount of donations. CEO's capable of doing this well could earn far more in the commercial sector, plus bonuses and share options,so they're unlikely to be doing it just to enrich themselves.

According to the Charity Commission website Cancer Research UK had a turnover of £582 million for year ending 2021. A total of 31 people earned over £100k that year with the highest paid earning between £250,000 and £300,000. It’s a good Charity and I buy from and give to their Charity shops. But smaller local charities that work on the basis of charity not big business would get my money first.