Contested Legacies

So the RSPCA will appeal against a court decision in favour of an irate relative cut out of her mother’s will. And for £2 million, who can blame them?

Rare as it is for relatives to contest charitable legacies, there is an issue here, which relates to the value and integrity of the brand. And more importantly what can we all do to avoid getting into this situation in the first place?

For a legacy of this size, the RSPCA trustees clearly had to defend it. Charity law demands that trustees protect the assets of the charity and, after all, £2 million would help a lot of furry friends. Jo public may see if differently, however, and I wonder what will be the damage to the RSPCA’s reputation among its donors? We will most probably never know and nor will the charity. However, I just sense that – rightly or wrongly - some people may see the charity’s action as grasping or unseemly.

So in taking this risk to brand integrity, we need to ask “how low do you go?” £2 million is well worth contesting, but £20,000 or £2,000? It’s an interesting question, with no easy answers.

More importantly though is the question about how to avoid getting into this situation in the first place.

While we obviously cannot decide what goes into donors’ wills or prevent people from cutting out their relatives, perhaps we should be more upfront about the need to provide for relatives (and especially dependents) in the first place? I know many charities do this already to some degree (or sometimes pay lip service to it), but some don’t and even among those that do, it could be stressed more prominently in legacy materials.

The risk in doing this of course is that charities may lose out on some funding, but they need to balance this carefully against the need to defend legacies from outraged relatives, with all the legal costs and bad publicity involved, which itself may deter other donors from giving (and not just in the form of legacies – it may impact on other forms of giving too).

It’s a difficult circle to square, but the current situation seems to indicate that we have not yet got the balance quite right.