Administering an Estate

crumblebucket

I am mid way through administering my late cousin’s estate after a 7 month wait for Probate.  Her property is sold, creditors paid and I am ready to distribute her bequests & finalise the accounts.  There are over 30 beneficiaries, including some charities and I have managed to trace the majority of them.  However, one of the charities has de registered & changed its main focus of operations; one does not appear to exist with no reply to letter sent to address given in Will; one other charity was a person operating out of their house who no longer appears to be active &, again, no response to letter. 

 I approached a local solicitor to ask what I should do in relation to these three - whether to find an equivalent charity or return the funds to the residue - & to ask whether it would be advisable to take out some sort of indemnity to protect myself.  However, because I have already started the administration process, the firm was not prepared to advise me on these specifics, deeming it to be too great a risk.  I have assumed, maybe incorrectly, that this will be the line taken by other firms so I am now stuck - I need the advice, am prepared to pay for it, but can’t get it!

Does anyone have any suggestions please?  Thank you.

Brie

I'd be tempted to set aside the money owed and give them time to respond.  Maybe put ads in appropriate papers or mags to see if you get any info.  Likely it could end up being one of those things where you use up all of the money owing simply looking for someone to pay it to.

Marcon

crumblebucket said:

I am mid way through administering my late cousin’s estate after a 7 month wait for Probate.  Her property is sold, creditors paid and I am ready to distribute her bequests & finalise the accounts.  There are over 30 beneficiaries, including some charities and I have managed to trace the majority of them.  However, one of the charities has de registered & changed its main focus of operations; one does not appear to exist with no reply to letter sent to address given in Will; one other charity was a person operating out of their house who no longer appears to be active &, again, no response to letter. 

 I approached a local solicitor to ask what I should do in relation to these three - whether to find an equivalent charity or return the funds to the residue - & to ask whether it would be advisable to take out some sort of indemnity to protect myself.  However, because I have already started the administration process, the firm was not prepared to advise me on these specifics, deeming it to be too great a risk.  I have assumed, maybe incorrectly, that this will be the line taken by other firms so I am now stuck - I need the advice, am prepared to pay for it, but can’t get it!

Does anyone have any suggestions please?  Thank you.

If a charity which existed at the time the will was made, but no longer exists by the date of the testator's death, then the gift will normally fail unless the bequest includes some sort of general charitable intention (eg '...or to a charity with similar objectives...').

First thing to do is check the three 'problem' charities to see if you can find any trace/more info: https://www.gov.uk/find-charity-information

Googling, or checking at Companies House https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company might also be useful.

What sort of money are we talking about for each of these?

crumblebucket

Marcon
The first charity was de registered several years ago.  It was for rescuing seabirds & was originally a sanctuary.  The same people still operate but only in an advisory capacity.  (£10,000)
The other two (£1,000 & £5,000) were never registered charities.  Google search of the former reveals nothing &  the latter was the name of someone operating a bird sanctuary from her home & I can find no evidence of her still doing this.

Savvy_Sue

It could be worth asking the 'advisory' people if there was a clause in their governing document which covered what happened to their assets when they de-registered. 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-close-a-charity shows how it should be done. Of course if an organisation never was a charity that's all a bit moot. 

I am slightly surprised by the solicitors' response, because it's not as if you have already spent all (or nearly) all the money, so I'm not sure what the risk is. But then, IANAL, and they are notoriously risk averse (quite rightly, of course). I feel I would try at least once more to get advice, and my approach might be to speak to accountancy firms who do a lot of charity accounting, and see if they can either advise you or point you to a friendly solicitor. Since you mention other charities, you could do worse than to look at their annual accounts and see who their auditor / independent examiner is, especially for any charities in the same general geographical area. 

Was the will written by a solicitor? That's another possible approach - the 'what if' clause Marcon mentions is commonplace and IMO best practice, so ask them what should be happening. 

crumblebucket

Thanks Savvy-Sue - good angle on the charities.
The solicitors that drew up the Will went bust as did the firm that took over their clients.  In the process the original Will went walkabouts & I was left with having to employ a probate specialist to ensure the photocopy I had was recognised.  From date of death to probate 18 months!

Savvy_Sue

I had another thought if you're struggling to find someone willing to answer what seems to me a fairly specific question about one aspect of the will.

https://www.trustadvice.org.uk/ advises charities, and knows their stuff. 

They work closely with https://iel.org.uk/ who offer independent examination of accounts to charities.

Between them, I'd hope you can get suggestions for 'proper' advice you can rely on.

poppystar

crumblebucket said:

Thanks Savvy-Sue - good angle on the charities.
The solicitors that drew up the Will went bust as did the firm that took over their clients.  In the process the original Will went walkabouts & I was left with having to employ a probate specialist to ensure the photocopy I had was recognised.  From date of death to probate 18 months!

Just for others information - you can still diy probate under such circumstances rather than employ a probate specialist. It still takes a long time though, just shy of a year in my experience. 

user1977

crumblebucket said:

I approached a local solicitor to ask what I should do in relation to these three - whether to find an equivalent charity or return the funds to the residue - & to ask whether it would be advisable to take out some sort of indemnity to protect myself.  However, because I have already started the administration process, the firm was not prepared to advise me on these specifics, deeming it to be too great a risk.  I have assumed, maybe incorrectly, that this will be the line taken by other firms 

Yes, I would think that an incorrect assumption. I don't see a reason why a solicitor couldn't give you advice on that discrete point without assuming any sort of liability for how the estate is administered generally.

pjs493

Usually Wills are written naming the charity and giving its official registered charity number, and will have a clause that if the charity closes, the money should be instead given to a suitable  registered charity with similar endeavours. It seems, from what you have said, that this was a badly written Will if the solicitor drawing it up didn't even look to see if the charities listed were registered and failed to include the registration number in the Will. 

So if the bird sanctuary charity wasn't registered and no longer exists, it would not be out of order to leave the money to a registered charity doing similar work.