Smee & Ford that great British company which has the best legacy stats in the world issued the latest legacy income stats (for England Wales and Scotland) for 2014 . And they are fascinating. Legacy income is up from £2.044 billion in 2013 to £2.208 billion in spite of a slightly reduced number of deaths (down by 1.1%)
The number of legacies has slightly dropped but I wonder whether this is the full picture. Every time I am in focus groups it is interesting to find that 10-20% of donors and volunteers have put their legacy in a letter of wishes and not in their Will. These morally binding (but not legally binding) documents are not filed with the Grant of Probate so they are only seen by the Executors. If this is common, which I believe it is, then legacy income is growing faster than expected.