Cat named in Will

molerat

gt568 said:

So what happens to the 1k now?

It will be distributed amongst the other beneficiaries as per the will.

Ammah45

Just curious. As cats don't have birth certificates and other IDs or a death certificate, how can anyone prove that the new cat is not Elsie!?
I don't mean to be facetious, but I am just wondering about the legalities give that no proof of life or death exists. 

Marcon

Malthusian said:

Marcon said:

I think given that other beneficiaries have already objected, it's probably making life needlessly difficult for OP to do anything other than administer the will as it now stands. The fuss factor is likely to outweigh any good intentions.

Depends whether "other beneficiaries object" mean "some beneficiaries object" or "the other beneficiaries object". If it's the former, there is a possibility that those who haven't objected might still be willing to reduce their share. As Theoretica says, you don't need them all to agree.
The OP could send an update to all beneficiaries along the lines of the following:
"You may recall that £1,000 was left in the Will to whoever re-homed [Friend]'s cat Elsie. I have been looking into the status of this bequest given that Elsie passed away and was replaced by Ernie. I have now established that, due to the terms of the Will, the bequest fails, and no monies are due to Ernie's new owner. It may well be that [Friend] would have wished for Ernie's new owner to receive the £1,000, but I am legally obliged to follow the Will as it was written, so the only way that can happen is for one or more beneficiaries to voluntarily reduce their share."
This is a simple factual statement of the legal position; the executor is not asking anyone to give up part of their share or implying that they are morally obliged to.

Still a bad idea which will add needless complexity if there are multiple beneficiaries, which sounds to be the case.

Wait until the estate has been fully wound up, and then by all means write to the beneficiaries (who are likely to be much more amenable once they have their bequests safely in their possession) asking if any of them would like to contribute to the 'cat bequest' - wording suggested above does the trick very nicely.

doodling

Hi,

Ammah45 said:

Just curious. As cats don't have birth certificates and other IDs or a death certificate, how can anyone prove that the new cat is not Elsie!?
I don't mean to be facetious, but I am just wondering about the legalities give that no proof of life or death exists. 

Presumably it would be demonstrated by the available evidence.  If there are witnesses who remember Elsie passing away and a new cat appearing then that would be persuasive if it ever got as far as a court.  Similarly, if the new car had a collar with a name tag then that might give a hint.

Of course, if the executor was going to fraudulently attempt to pay the new cat owner then the best strategy would be for them to claim that the new cat was also called Elsie (if you are going to write your cat's name into a will it is probably easier to call all your cats the same name!) but that approach would suffer if there were witnesses who remembered it being called something else.

As any legal argument would be on the balance of probabilities then definitive proof is not required (unless someone decided to go after the executor for fraud).

msb1234

Savvy_Sue said:

gt568 said:

So what happens to the 1k now?

Passes back into the estate, probably to (be shared among) the residuary beneficiary/ies, ie those who aren't left anything specific. 

So, if the house goes to Fred, and the sports car goes to Frank, and the money goes to Freda and Fiona, then Fred still gets the house, Frank the sports car, and Freda and Fiona get £1k more than they were expecting. 

What if all beneficiaries are down as receiving a set amount? 

Marcon

msb1234 said:

Savvy_Sue said:

gt568 said:

So what happens to the 1k now?

Passes back into the estate, probably to (be shared among) the residuary beneficiary/ies, ie those who aren't left anything specific. 

So, if the house goes to Fred, and the sports car goes to Frank, and the money goes to Freda and Fiona, then Fred still gets the house, Frank the sports car, and Freda and Fiona get £1k more than they were expecting. 

What if all beneficiaries are down as receiving a set amount? 

They won't be - or if they are, chaos reigns if no residuary beneficiary is named.

boingy

Execute the will as it's written. The cat has a new owner and it's not really the executor's job to try to second guess what the original intention was, however unfair that seems.

Malthusian

msb1234 said:

What if all beneficiaries are down as receiving a set amount? 

Then the residue (including the £1,000) passes as per intestacy, and the solicitor who drew up the Will gets walloped on their bare backside 50 times with Black's Dictionary.

Ammah45 said:
I don't mean to be facetious, but I am just wondering about the legalities give that no proof of life or death exists. 

Just to add to the above, it is very likely that there is lots of proof of both Elsie's death and Ernie's adoption. Vets' records of the death, records of the adoption from the breeder or rescue centre, financial statements showing any payment made to Ernie's former owner, that kind of thing. The late friend may have posted about the death of her cat on social media (and if they're not on social media, a letter or a text mentioning their new cat to a friend serves the same purpose).
It's crucial to remember in cases like these that in a legal sense you only need to prove what happened "on the balance of probabilities". There is almost certainly an overwhelming amount of proof that Ernie is not Elsie. Even the verbal testimony of people who knew the deceased and knew that she replaced her cat is "proof".
To flip the scenario on its head: if a Will leaves money to a newborn (or for that matter an adult) whose birth has not been registered, their lack of a certificate doesn't disinherit them. Equally a bequest to a recently deceased individual still fails even if a death certificate hasn't yet been produced.
Renaming Ernie to Elsie doesn't work, even if you managed to do it retrospectively (i.e. get everyone to pretend he was called Elsie all along). If you make a Will in 2019 leaving money to "the new owner of my cat Elsie", then that is a clear and specific reference to the cat you had at the time. If the Will said "the new owner of my cat Elsie or any cat called Elsie I may own at the time of my death" then it would have been fine - which as discussed on page 1 is how it should have been written, minus the "Elsie" part.

HillStreetBlues

Marcon said:

Hopefully Ernie's new owner doesn't know about the bequest (and didn't 'adopt' Ernie in the expectation...).

Who knows what instructions the solicitor was given? It's all very well to say 'they should have...' but it's entirely possible the lady in question was adamant that if her dear Elsie died she'd never, ever have another cat, and insisted the provision in the will should be worded as it stands now.

I agree, Elsie might have been beloved, the next moggy she didn't take to but put up with it.

Grumpy_chap

If there is contention over whether or not to support the new parent of the new cat "Ernie, but not Elsie" when the sum in consideration is as low as £1k, that might well indicate that the total Estate is relatively modest and the Executor would do well to administer swiftly and simply in strict adherence to the Will and not add any complications or prolongation.