Charities – Please treat your legacy donors nicely!

A recently reported court case (Loring & Others v The Woodland Trust) has highlighted the fact that overly aggressive behaviour by some charities in pursuit of monies left to them in wills is putting people off leaving legacies to charities.

Having assisted many executors in settling estates I have found that charities representatives can be difficult to deal with and can cause problems for the executors. The larger charities have departments set up to deal with legacies and perhaps understandably try to maximise their share of any monies left to them in people’s estates, but rather than being grateful, as most people expect them to be, for whatever they receive from an estate, charities can often be aggressive in pursuing what they think they are entitled to.

The above case is a good example of this. The individual left an amount to their family which was stated in their Will to be a sum equivalent to the nil inheritance tax (IHT) band, with the balance of the estate to be left The Woodland Trust. In this case the nil IHT band available to the estate was calculated to be £650,000 but The Woodland Trust thought that it should only be £325,000. They took the case to the High Court in pursuit of the additional £325,000 and lost. Rather than accepting defeat gracefully, they appealed to the Court of Appeal and lost again.

No doubt The Woodland Trust thought it had good justification for this course of action, but it must have caused significant anxiety to the family of the deceased and significant extra cost and inconvenience for the both the executors and the charity. Had the deceased realised what would happen they would surely have thought twice before leaving any of their money to charity at all.

My own experience has led me to the point where I will actively discourage clients form leaving money to charities in their Wills unless they specify precisely the sums that they are leaving. Given that charities receive a significant amount of their income from legacies I think they could do more to reassure potential donors that they will behave fairly (and nicely) when dealing with their estates.