I don’t know how many of you have been following the Huguette Clark story in the news. Born into a fabulously wealthy family, Huguette recently died at 104 after years in seclusion, and left a will that cut her blood relatives out of her fortune and left the majority of her estate to her nurse, advisors, and the hospital where she spent her final years. She also established a private foundation to fund the arts in her will.
You can read all about Huguette in this article in the New York Times (and I recommend you do – a fascinating and somewhat sad story), but I thought what you’d really like to see is her will. For those of you who don’t do much in the planned giving area, you might be interested to see an example of a will from a person with great charitable intent.
From my experience in planned giving, while the woman and the amount of money are extraordinary, this is a very typical-looking will. Nonprofits are listed among loved ones. Relatives who never visited are deliberately left out. The dispersal of important personal property (in this case a Claude Monet painting and a very valuable doll collection) is detailed. Some bequests are specific like the $1 million left to Beth Israel Hospital and some are residual bequest made as a percentage of the “remainder”. (You never really know what that remainder will be until you get an inventory of the assets from the executor of the estate. Could be a lot; could be nothing.)
And, as does often happen when a wealthy person is estranged from her family, there is the loom of a challenge to the will from long-lost cousins – especially since the accountant and the attorney are left large bequests.
This will, like so many others, illustrates the very personal nature of planned giving. As a nonprofit beneficiary, your organization is right there with the family, the pets, and the cherished possessions. You get to know the dirty laundry, the struggles, and the disappointments.
But most importantly, whether you knew the gift was coming or not, your cause touched the person in some very deep and personal way. So personal, in fact, that they put your organization alongside (or maybe even instead of) family. Wow. If that’s not an indicator of devotion, I don’t know what is.
