* Wills Property Box Tab

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Keathswa
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Wills Property Box Tab

Post by Keathswa »

HI Forum

I have recently added the property box tab for wills and the associated fact set. I have been validating the information that has been carrying through and I noticed a few things. I was hoping that those in the forum who are using this may be able to help me.

Firstly, I am not sure whether the Beneficiary fields is meant to be populated by direct entry into the fields on the wills property box or whether I am missing a fact in my fact set.

Secondly, the 'late of' and 'in' fields feed off the 'will' fact. However, this is factually incorrect as the late of refers to at death. As an example, I have one person in my tree who made there will in Broken Hill NSW, died in Murray Bridge SA and had their will probated in Adelaide. I would suggest that the 'late of' and 'in' fields feed off the 'residence at death' fact. I was wondering how I could change this so that they feed off that fact rather than the 'will' fact. This would keep the will fact factual and ensure the will tab fields reflect the persons residence at death. Alternatively, how are others dealing with this.

Any help greatly appreciated

Garry Keath
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by tatewise »

Garry, you recently asked for advice on a related topic of Fact Sets and changing fact between attributes and events (16724) but despite a lengthy reply we have not heard back from you. The same thing happened before with Place and address sentence construction (13007). That lack of response does not encourage us to give a lengthy answer.

Remember that such as fhugdownloads:contents:property_box_tabs_military_census_wills|> Property Box Tab ~ Military & Census & Wills are provided by other users just like you. You are welcome to customise them to suit your needs, and even upload your version for the benefit of others.

The fhugdownloads:contents:death_and_burial|> Fact Set ~ Death and Burial for Property Box Tab page lists its Facts and they can be checked via Tools > Fact Types and selecting the Fact Set for Death_or_Burial1.

You can investigate custom Property Box tabs via the cog Menu > Customize Data Entry option.
After choosing a Tab, and a Selected Item, use Edit Custom Item to review or edit its definition.
Click the Help buttons for detailed advice.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by Keathswa »

Hi Mike

Thanks for your response regarding this post. The information you have provided is sufficient for me to investigate further. Once this is complete, I can post what I have done to the forum for other users. I also understand that every user will operate Family Historian differently and customise it to their needs. However, sometimes it is useful to throw out the question to learn from others.

In relation to your comment that regarding " That lack of responses does not encourage us to give a lengthy answer", I had no expectation of a lengthy of answer. However, I take your point regarding not responding. As you will note I am not a frequent poster on the forum, however, I and other users need to acknowledge that you respond to most forum items and share your knowledge openly. At a minimum I should have posted a thanks to you for the information you provided on the post on 9 November 2015, Place and address sentence construction (13007). However, I will re-visit this post and add some work I have done on this since 2015. In relation to the post for 26 March 2019, Fact Sets and changing fact between attributes and events (16724), I will post a response this shortly.

Again, thanks for your assistance.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by davidf »

With regard to Wills, I think users need to decide what conventions they are going to follow.
(Mike may move this to a more appropriate part of the forum!)

People can make multiple wills and it is often interesting to follow thorough the changes and see how family dynamics (or members have changed). If so, the following convention might be appropriate:

If you enter a will (against the place and date where it was made), the executors and beneficiaries mentioned in the will are only prospective executors and beneficiaries.

The Probate Fact is probably the one where you would enter actual executors and beneficiaries and in the note indicate the date of the will/codicil which obtained probate.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by tatewise »

David, you are almost certainly correct.
The Wills tab was designed in 2010 when FH V4 introduced custom tabs, and is due an overhaul.

It only supports the 1st Will Event instance, and I've spotted a technical design flaw or two.

If instead of using INDI.WILL[1] it were to use INDI.WILL[last] to cope with multiple Will Events then they would become Read-Only fields in the Wills tab. So that is a trade-off consideration.

It must be recognised that a custom tab is only ever a summary snapshot of a subset of the details in the Facts tab.

If a discussion between Garry and David, et al, leads to a 'better' Wills tab (that can be Attached here for trials), then I am happy to update the Downloads & Links page.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by AdrianBruce »

davidf wrote:... If so, the following convention might be appropriate:
If you enter a will (against the place and date where it was made), the executors and beneficiaries mentioned in the will are only prospective executors and beneficiaries.

The Probate Fact is probably the one where you would enter actual executors and beneficiaries and in the note indicate the date of the will/codicil which obtained probate.
To no surprise on my part, I wholly agree with you on your analysis of the first bit - the will mentions only prospective executors and beneficiaries (though actual witnesses - that's "witness" in the original, real-world sense of the word!). (What follows may be a bit too analytical for some - but I'm afraid I like exercising the brain...)

I've been entering actual executors against the probate (executors may die or decline the duty). I remain unconvinced, though, that beneficiaries should be entered with the probate fact. My typical source for a probate fact is the Probate Calendar, which in all its UK incarnations has never, to the best of my knowledge, mentioned beneficiaries. I've only ever found those in wills - what I've been doing is in fact more complicated than just adding them as "witnesses", as I have used a separate inheritance event against the beneficiary because the date of inheritance may not be (nominally) the date of probate, but when they reach 21 (say).

Still, that's no real reason to remove beneficiaries as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events - if there are jurisdictions with beneficiaries listed in probate documents, people recording them may indeed want to use beneficiaries as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events.

But I would add one more thing - wills may appoint not just executors but also trustees. I've not tried to record trustees as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events yet, but I forsee a potential issue if people can only be reported in one witness role per event????
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by brianlummis »

But I would add one more thing - wills may appoint not just executors but also trustees. I've not tried to record trustees as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events yet, but I forsee a potential issue if people can only be reported in one witness role per event????
Adrian, wouldn't the answer be to have an additional role of "Executor & Trustee"?

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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by tatewise »

On a technical point, a person can be a Fact Witness in FH for as many Roles in one Fact as you like.
Even the Principal can have Roles in their own Fact. i.e. One person can be Executor and also Trustee.
However, only the first such entry appears in that person's Facts tab and Narrative Report.

There is an overriding rule in FH, which was reiterated in Record Window - Timeline of family events affected by adding Witness event (16723), and that is a Fact can only appear once in any display.
So if there is potentially a local Fact, &/or a Witness Role, &/or a Timeline Fact for the same Fact, then only the first of those will be shown.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by AdrianBruce »

brianlummis wrote:... Adrian, wouldn't the answer be to have an additional role of "Executor & Trustee"?
Err - yes. Simple but effective now you mention it! Might be tricky if you wanted to run a query to list executors because you'd need to remember there were 2 roles, but there's a very long pole that I don't (yet) want to touch witness queries with...
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by AdrianBruce »

tatewise wrote:On a technical point, a person can be a Fact Witness in FH for as many Roles in one Fact as you like.
Even the Principal can have Roles in their own Fact. i.e. One person can be Executor and also Trustee.
However, only the first such entry appears in that person's Facts tab and Narrative Report.
...
Quite so - that's what I was trying to convey with the slightly obscure phrase "people can only be reported in one witness role per event". I had originally written "people can only have one witness role per event" when I realised that was wrong and that I would be corrected if I left it thus! ;)

If I recall correctly, I didn't take very well to Witnesses when they first appeared in FH, and I think that was because the very first "witnessed" event I tried to enter was my parents' marriage, where my uncle was both a (real-world) witness and Dad's Best Man - and I couldn't get it to report both in the manner that I expected.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by tatewise »

Sorry, I misunderstood 'reported' as meaning 'recorded' as opposed to 'shown'.
Even then the multiple Roles are reported/shown if you look in the appropriate places.
i.e. The Records Window, the All tab, the Menu > Witnesses feature, or via Queries & Plugins.
It might even be possible in Narrative Reports with complex Witness Sentence Templates.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by AdrianBruce »

tatewise wrote:... Even then the multiple Roles are reported/shown if you look in the appropriate places ...
OK - so not totally invisible then.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by davidf »

I guess a lot depends on where you are coming from in terms of tightening up personal practice (particularly after beginning to get to grips with "FHwitnesses"). The key question is how much effort you are prepare to put into reworking Family Trees to make them consistent with your own current conventions.
AdrianBruce wrote:...
I've been entering actual executors against the probate (executors may die or decline the duty). I remain unconvinced, though, that beneficiaries should be entered with the probate fact. My typical source for a probate fact is the Probate Calendar, which in all its UK incarnations has never, to the best of my knowledge, mentioned beneficiaries. I've only ever found those in wills - what I've been doing is in fact more complicated than just adding them as "witnesses", as I have used a separate inheritance event against the beneficiary because the date of inheritance may not be (nominally) the date of probate, but when they reach 21 (say).
I have like you used a separate Inheritance fact, in my case a "Legatee Attribute" for the actual beneficiary with the Testator/Testatrix in the Value field. If I continued this practice (Legatee to Testator) I guess I would now enter the Testator/Testatrix as a witness. In the note field I would summarise the legacy; where a legacy is specified as a share, using the probated Will and the Estate Accounts, you can often work out who for instance was standing in their deceased parents place as a legatee as well as verifying how many offspring a deceased legatee had. So the share was of significance to the Legatee - which is why I think I prefer the fact to belong to the legatee rather than the testator. Any research notes can go on the citation note (bottom of the Source panel) or on a shared note attached to the citation. As you say the date of the legacy may be significant which is another reason for putting the fact on the legatee's record.
AdrianBruce wrote: Still, that's no real reason to remove beneficiaries as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events - if there are jurisdictions with beneficiaries listed in probate documents, people recording them may indeed want to use beneficiaries as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events.
"Probate Documents" to researchers (at least in E&W) often means the Probate Calendar. But the "event" can be sourced to a Probated Will or may be recorded on Estate Accounts.

If you are working from Probated Wills (or Estate Accounts) you will have the final beneficiaries (or their heirs) and I can see a reason for adding them as FHWitnesses to the Probate Fact. (Details of shares can be in the witness note? However, unlike putting the fact on the Legatee, there is not a clear place to put any research note.)

If you are just working from a Probate Calendar you need to reference back to the actual will that was Probated. Mike has suggested that INDI.WILL[last] might be used; this works provided it is a single Will and not a Will and collection of codicils (I suspect most of us use the Will Fact for entering Codicils - and Deeds of Variation!). I put a specific written reference to the date of the will (and other testamentary documents) that was probated

If you have access to multiple wills (for the same person) you can trace changes in the make up of the family (or of the testator's affections). Such instances are rare but when they do occur can be fascinating. In a half family, I have a probate court case where a woman asserted in her will possession of assets due to a marriage being invalid (back in the times when they could not make up your mind whether you could legally marry widowed siblings in law!). In such cases you want to see the detail by testator rather than across a number of legatees.
AdrianBruce wrote: But I would add one more thing - wills may appoint not just executors but also trustees. I've not tried to record trustees as "witnesses" (in the FH sense) to probate events yet, but I forsee a potential issue if people can only be reported in one witness role per event????
Perhaps the Executors are most relevant to the Testator and should be FHwitnesses to the Probate. If someone was appointed as Trustee of the Estate - isn't that the same as Executor? If someone was appointed as a trustee of a legacy (perhaps because the legatee was under age), do you add them as Trustee FHWitnesses to the legacy on the Legatee?

As an aside, I often find myself wishing that FH notes could hold hyperlinks to specific individuals (either in the same tree or in another tree). Then you could have a transcript of the will(s) with hyperlinks to the beneficiaries.

As an aside (2), I often wonder about whether this sort of "reverse witnessing" has a nasty gotcha somewhere. With things like Marriage Witnesses it is clear that you attach the witness to the marriage fact for the Couple. Attaching the testator as a witness to a fact for a legatee is so to speak putting this the wrong way round (you normally think of the testator as the principal, not the witness), but I can't see a reason not to do so.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by Keathswa »

I agree setting conventions around how you approach wills and probate is helpful. In reading, the string posts, there are a number of elements at play. These are roles and terminology, the pre and post death components of wills and technical aspects of making any changes work.

Firstly, roles and terminology in wills and the granting probate. I have found that in most of the wills I have, the trustee and executor are one and the same. However, not all wills appoint a trustee. Terminology also appears to be adding to the discussion. In some cases, terms are being interchanged with each other. As an example beneficiary and legatee. Looking at definitions; a Beneficiary is defined as a person or organisation receiving a gift from a Will, while a Legatee is defined as a person named in a Will. A beneficiary appears to sit with the Probate side of wills, while legatee sits with the creation of the will and pre death side. Other roles in the will could be guardian and witness to the will. I have not encountered guardians in wills, however, I have a few wills where the will was actually witnessed by a family member.

Secondly, looking at the Wills Property Box Tab, there may be a benefit in separating Wills and Probate into separate tabs. The Wills capturing the pre-death components. A Probate/LOA tab would capture the post-death components. This type of change would enable the capturing of legatees (based on the definition above) in the will tab and on the LOA/Probate the beneficiaries. It which case, it would cater for cases where a child/relation of a legatee is becomes the beneficiary as a result of the death of the legatee.

Lastly, are any technical and design considerations for the tab/s. Technical considerations is not my strength at the moment. However, based on the posts it is evident that there may be some restrictions and/or compromises required regarding information that can be drawn through to provide a summary of Wills and LOA/Probate. From a design perspective, it is keeping it simple and ensuring that it remains a summary.

I will have a go at drafting a new Wills tab and a separate LOA/Probate. Based on what I have on at the moment it may take me a week or two.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by davidf »

Garry
Keathswa wrote:Firstly, roles and terminology in wills and the granting probate. I have found that in most of the wills I have, the trustee and executor are one and the same. However, not all wills appoint a trustee. Terminology also appears to be adding to the discussion. In some cases, terms are being interchanged with each other. As an example beneficiary and legatee. Looking at definitions; a Beneficiary is defined as a person or organisation receiving a gift from a Will, while a Legatee is defined as a person named in a Will. A beneficiary appears to sit with the Probate side of wills, while legatee sits with the creation of the will and pre death side.
I hope an executorship specialist steps in and helps indicate where terms are interchangeable and how historical changes have or have not materially changed the substance of these terms! My (non legal) pennyworth:

Will and Testament have now been superseded by "Will" (I'm told always capitalised to avoid confusing with the verb). I think however the two terms used to have distinct meanings dealing with different types of assets. Does this matter? Possibly if we know of examples where these were distinct documents?

I agree that trustee and executor are one and the same when referring to the estate. I repeat my point from a previous post that sometimes there are (different) trustees appointed to hold a legacy until for instance a child beneficiary reaches majority or some other age.

I have not previously been aware of the distinction you draw between the terms beneficiary and legatee. I am aware that a Will may name someone, but due to their death (or other event) the Will may specify someone who takes their place - even if that person is not born at the time of the Will-making - such as "failing him, any children of his living at the time of my death". Is this distinction one that we need to be able to record (other than by note) - and if it is are we agreed with the definitions that you have found? I have found for instance the terms residual beneficiary and residual legatee being used interchangeably.

Probate and Letters of Administration are different, but do we in practice want them to be treated as the same FHfact? (My understanding: Probate is where Executors are authorised to Execute an estate in accordance with a valid Will; Letter of Administration are where Administrators (appointed by the Court) are authorised to administer the estate of someone who died without a valid Will - or where executors of a valid Will have died before completing the Executorship. Associated with an Administration there may be "Bounders" of "Bondsmen" who guarantee to the court that the Administrators will do their job.

Codicils and Deeds of Variation may also need consideration but might be covered under the general fact "Will". Codicils (pre-death documents by the testator) are rarer nowadays (as with WP documents reprinting an entire Will is easier and clearer than adding a codicil), but in previous years the changes in a codicil can reflect changing family relationships or changing fortunes. Finding Deeds of Variation (Post-death documents where beneficiaries can agree to give up part of their legacies either to enable someone else to benefit - or for tax-planning purposes!) are rarer as they effectively "replace" the original Will.
Keathswa wrote:Secondly, looking at the Wills Property Box Tab, there may be a benefit in separating Wills and Probate into separate tabs. The Wills capturing the pre-death components. A Probate/LOA tab would capture the post-death components. This type of change would enable the capturing of legatees (based on the definition above) in the will tab and on the LOA/Probate the beneficiaries. It which case, it would cater for cases where a child/relation of a legatee is becomes the beneficiary as a result of the death of the legatee.
I would agree with your pre/post death division - even if not necessarily agreeing with your use of the terms legatee and beneficiary. However what people may want rather depends on how much detail they wish to hold. For many it may be sufficient to have a single probated "Will" fact based on the probate date. Others may wish to track the pre-death Will-making. Ideally the "Will" fact should be capable of either level of detail - I don't think we should force people to use both Will and Probate facts.
Keathswa wrote:Lastly, are any technical and design considerations for the tab/s. Technical considerations is not my strength at the moment. However, based on the posts it is evident that there may be some restrictions and/or compromises required regarding information that can be drawn through to provide a summary of Wills and LOA/Probate. From a design perspective, it is keeping it simple and ensuring that it remains a summary.
I have only created "simple" facts for personal use so would also not claim particular technical strength. When Mike says "I've spotted a technical design flaw or two." I am not sure what he has in mind, because I am not sure how to distinguish a "technical flaw" from a possibly deliberate restriction in functionality.

Ideally "standard" facts should work within the spirit of FH which I understand to be to try and offer relatively easy access to the maintenance of advanced genealogical records. Custom facts can be more complex.

Mike and Jane probably have a better view on how you achieve "easy access". For instance, what is easier: two simple facts "Probate" and "Letters of Administration" with the appropriate witnesses already set up - but which requires the user to understand the difference between the two facts, or, one more complex fact covering both that can be selected easily, but which then offers for instance a wider range of witnesses - not all of which will be applicable? Likewise do you restrict "Will" to be a Life-time event - even though some may want to use the fact to record a "Probated Will" and not differentiate between Will-making and Probate events?
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by tatewise »

Some technical clarifications...

Will Event
This is a standard GEDCOM event supported & understood by most genealogy products, so it exports well.
In FH it is defined with a Life Time Frame, but can be entered with post-death Date (just ignore the warning).

Probate Event
This is a standard GEDCOM event supported & understood by most genealogy products, so it exports well.
In FH it is defined with a Post-Death Time Frame.

Custom Facts such as Letters of Administration
These use a standard GEDCOM feature supported by most genealogy products, but they won't 'understand' the meaning.

Wills Custom Tab
The current download only works with the 1st instance of the Will Event, i.e. %INDI.WILL[1]%
Multiple Will Events pose a problem, as %INDI.WILL[last]% only allows read-only fields.
So Will details can only be entered via the Facts tab and not the Wills custom tab.

The current download uses Will local Note field instances in a novel way:
%INDI.WILL[1].NOTE2[1]% holds Status comments.
%INDI.WILL[1].NOTE2[3]% holds Beneficiary 1.
%INDI.WILL[1].NOTE2[4]% holds Beneficiary 2.
through to
%INDI.WILL[1].NOTE2[10]% holds Beneficiary 10.
%INDI.WILL[1].NOTE2[2]% (i.e. instance 2) is not used at all, so when Beneficiaries are entered they will not stay put and will move down to fill the missing instance 2.
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Re: Wills Property Box Tab

Post by AdrianBruce »

Be aware that terminology is, and always has been, different in the Scottish legal system - I think ScotlandsPeople lists the terms.

Looking at my Mother's stuff, it was a Will & Testament in 2011. I was certain that they originally covered different things, but:
Though it has at times been thought that a "will" was historically limited to real property while "testament" applies only to dispositions of personal property (thus giving rise to the popular title of the document as "Last Will and Testament"), the historical records show that the terms have been used interchangeably
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_and_testament Mind you, I'm not sure of the source quoted...

Just to confuse matters re Administration - the grant of probate for her will reads "Administration of all the estate ... was granted ... to the Executor".
Adrian
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