Appointing Executors for a Will

p00hsticks

SiliconChip said:

p00hsticks said:

doodling said:

I would be very reluctant to be executor of a will where a proportion of the residual estate was bequeathed to a charity - charities tend to make executor's lives hell.

This is something that often gets repeated on this board and elsewhere, but I wonder how often it is actually from personal experience and how often just something someone heard or read somewhere second hand.

I'm in the end process of wrapping up an estate, whicih left two charities (among others) as residual beneficiaries. Due to lockdowns and other covid issues and a protracted house sale, it's taken me over two years to get to this point, but I've found the charities nothing but sympathetic and respectful during the process, with minimal contact and eventually being very grateful when I was recently finally able to get their bequest to them.

My interpretation of previous posts on this subject is that if a charity is left a percentage of an estate then they are duty bound to ensure that the amount they receive is as high as possible, and that could mean that they object to (for instance) the sale of a property at a lower value for a quick sale rather than hanging on to get the best price. Your experience seems to contradict that, so maybe it's not always the case, but if I were to include charities in my Will (which I'm not as things stand) I would leave them a fixed amount and make the residual beneficiary/ies someone who isn't going to make such a fuss.

You need to bear in mind though that with a fixed bequest you don't then necessarily have a good idea of how much of the estate is going to be left for the residual beneficiaries by the time you die. Someone may regard a sum of say, £10,000 as a relatively small part of their estate at the time they write their will, but by the time they die many years later in a care home it could be nearly all that's left. Yes, the lesson is to frequently review the contents of your will and update if appropriate, but in real life, how many of us do ?

In my case I had a property to sell, but other that one of the charities asking for a copy of the estate accounts, neither put any pressure on at all to achieve a particular price or sell in a particular time frame. These were both large national charitues with specific legacy teams, and became aware that they were mentioned in the will when it went to probate.

Gavin83

That’s a fair point about a fixed value. Let’s say you leave £10k each to 2 charities but by the date of death there’s only £12k left in the estate. Of course the fairest outcome would be £6k each but I’m willing to bet some charities will argue they should receive the £10k as outlined in the will.

Personally I’d never be an executor for a will where I wasn’t a beneficiary. It’s far too much work, responsibility and potentially a huge headache for absolutely no reward. It’s even worse when you consider executors can be personally liable if the will isn’t distributed correctly. If others wish to do it though that’s up to them.

My wife found out she was an executor a will when she wasn’t a beneficiary nor had been informed in advance. Naturally she renounced.

p00hsticks

SiliconChip said:

p00hsticks said:

doodling said:

I would be very reluctant to be executor of a will where a proportion of the residual estate was bequeathed to a charity - charities tend to make executor's lives hell.

This is something that often gets repeated on this board and elsewhere, but I wonder how often it is actually from personal experience and how often just something someone heard or read somewhere second hand.

I'm in the end process of wrapping up an estate, whicih left two charities (among others) as residual beneficiaries. Due to lockdowns and other covid issues and a protracted house sale, it's taken me over two years to get to this point, but I've found the charities nothing but sympathetic and respectful during the process, with minimal contact and eventually being very grateful when I was recently finally able to get their bequest to them.

My interpretation of previous posts on this subject is that if a charity is left a percentage of an estate then they are duty bound to ensure that the amount they receive is as high as possible, and that could mean that they object to (for instance) the sale of a property at a lower value for a quick sale rather than hanging on to get the best price.

Whether it's a charity that are the beneficiaries or not, it's the responsibility of the executor to ensure that the estate is dealt with sensibly, and where large assets of uncertain value, such as property, are involved there's always going to be some discretion about prices and timescale that the executor will need to exercise.

I'm not sure, unless a property or similar appeared to have been sold at well undervalue to connected parties and not on the open market, that the charity would have any more say in, or right to object to, the price it was actually marketed and sold at than any other beneficiary. And even though they may potentially have more legal resources than the average beneficiary, I'm not sure that the cost of using them to challenge an executor on the exact way a will has been executed would necessarily be viewed as a sensible use of the charity's funding unless there has obviously serious mis-handling of the estate.

I'd be interested to know if anyone on these boards has actually had any first hand experience of charities who are major beneficiaries in a will taking any active interest in the actual execution of that will, let alone objected to the way it was handled, 

RAS

There certainly was a thread way back when a charity caused a lot he of bother, but I can't remember the exact details. They objected to an executor decision and it took ages before they accepted that it wouldn't make a material difference to their inheritance. So the distribution was held up a year or two.

p00hsticks

Gavin83 said:

That’s a fair point about a fixed value. Let’s say you leave £10k each to 2 charities but by the date of death there’s only £12k left in the estate. Of course the fairest outcome would be £6k each but I’m willing to bet some charities will argue they should receive the £10k as outlined in the will.

I suspect that in a case such as the one you outline, where there is not enough money in the estate to  there is a clear legal ruling / precedent of what needs to happen, and it's not something that could be sensibly argued against. Unfortunately I don't know what it is, but suspect that it wil lbe that the eatate is distributed in proportions reflecting the original bequest  - so in your case £6k each.

I do know that, at least in england and Wales,  all fixed bequests take priority over the residual eatate. Which is the point I was making in my earlier post - if you leave a fixed £10k to two benefciaries, whether charities, kind neighours or whatever, and the residual estate to your children, thinking that the latter will inherit the bulk of it, but then your resources are severely depleted, your children end up with very little or nothing.

Keep_pedalling

Gavin83 said:

That’s a fair point about a fixed value. Let’s say you leave £10k each to 2 charities but by the date of death there’s only £12k left in the estate. Of course the fairest outcome would be £6k each but I’m willing to bet some charities will argue they should receive the £10k as outlined in the will.

The rules are very straight forward in a case like that, the residual beneficiaries would get nothing, and the charities would get £6k each, there is no possible legal challenge to that

Personally I’d never be an executor for a will where I wasn’t a beneficiary. It’s far too much work, responsibility and potentially a huge headache for absolutely no reward. It’s even worse when you consider executors can be personally liable if the will isn’t distributed correctly. If others wish to do it though that’s up to them.

My wife found out she was an executor a will when she wasn’t a beneficiary nor had been informed in advance. Naturally she renounced.

I administered administered my mother’s estate without being a beneficiary but it was a simple cash estate and I had been her POA so new her finances very well. I have also agreed to be the executor of a cousin who has no immediate family and I have no idea if I will be included in it. He owns no property so it should be strait forward. 

It is wrong to make someone your executor without asking them first.

user1977

p00hsticks said:

SiliconChip said:

p00hsticks said:

doodling said:

I would be very reluctant to be executor of a will where a proportion of the residual estate was bequeathed to a charity - charities tend to make executor's lives hell.

This is something that often gets repeated on this board and elsewhere, but I wonder how often it is actually from personal experience and how often just something someone heard or read somewhere second hand.

I'm in the end process of wrapping up an estate, whicih left two charities (among others) as residual beneficiaries. Due to lockdowns and other covid issues and a protracted house sale, it's taken me over two years to get to this point, but I've found the charities nothing but sympathetic and respectful during the process, with minimal contact and eventually being very grateful when I was recently finally able to get their bequest to them.

My interpretation of previous posts on this subject is that if a charity is left a percentage of an estate then they are duty bound to ensure that the amount they receive is as high as possible, and that could mean that they object to (for instance) the sale of a property at a lower value for a quick sale rather than hanging on to get the best price.

I'm not sure, unless a property or similar appeared to have been sold at well undervalue to connected parties and not on the open market, that the charity would have any more say in, or right to object to, the price it was actually marketed and sold at than any other beneficiary. 

Yes, people do tend to overstate the executors' duty to get the best price - it means no more than doing what any other vendor would reasonably do. Beneficiaries cannot demand that a property is kept on the market for months on end in the hope of some unicorn buyer coming along offering silly money, and in practice that would probably mean they end up with less money anyway (given the costs and risks involved in being responsible for an empty property).