How to Leave Money or Property to the Mills Archive Trust

These notes are provided in good faith and reflect the situation under English law. If in doubt, always consult a solicitor.

Your help can make a difference
The Mills Archive Trust is a registered charity dedicated to protecting historical and contemporary evidence of mills and milling and assuring future public access to this valuable material. We need to invest substantial amounts to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Archive and your support can help bring this about. The Mills Archive Trust relies heavily on those with an interest in mills to help us in our efforts. Your help will allow us to fund vital work that is so important.

The work of the Mills Archive is immensely varied, covering education, cataloguing, conservation and research as well as providing a physical centre and Internet access for researchers and the public to use. All of this helps us to raise the importance of traditional mills and milling to our heritage. The Mills Archive is funded by private donations and by income derived from any endowments we may receive.

Legacies
As a registered charity, the Mills Archive cannot continue its important work without the support of people who share our aims and ideals. There are many ways in which legacies could be used to support the work of the Archive. Legacies take many forms, the most common being a legacy to a specific charity for its general purposes. We ask all those with an interest in mills and milling to consider how they could benefit the Mills Archive Trust by making a Will or adding a Codicil to an existing Will. If you intend to leave us a legacy, suitable wording for pecuniary and residuary legacies and for specific bequests is indicated in the boxes below.

A Pecuniary Legacy mentions a specific sum but suffers from the disadvantage that its value will be eaten away by inflation. Although we welcome such legacies, we would ask you to review the amount from time to time in case it becomes insufficient to achieve what you had intended.

A Residuary Legacy would leave the Mills Archive the whole or a share of your remaining assets once other bequests have been met. This approach is particularly beneficial; it is simple and tax efficient, and will rise in value as your estate increases. In addition you do not need to quantify the sum nor take into account inflation when you draw up your Will. Residuary legacies offer us the greatest benefits and as a donation to a registered charity, can help you minimise the impact of Inheritance Tax.

A Specific Bequest would leave the Mills Archive particular items or collections, either for us to enhance our own holdings or to sell to raise funds. We believe in keeping collections together although we may dispose of material that is not considered suitable for conservation. In addition if published material is duplicated in our collection we may sell it to raise funds for the archive.

To help both your executors and the Mills Archive we recommend that a description of the contents of the collection to be bequeathed should be made. If needed, we are always happy to help to draw up the list. Depending on the nature of the collection we may also ask you to sign one of our forms assigning us copyright. This will allow us for example to publish photographs in our digital catalogues and make them available on the Internet. It is helpful if the Trustees can have a copy for our files of that part of your Will that specifically refers to any bequest and of any related list of items.

If you propose to leave an item or a collection to the Mills Archive the preferred wording is:

How your gift can be honoured
The Trustees will respect the wishes of those who want their intentions to remain confidential, but if you agree we would appreciate the chance to acknowledge your generosity during your lifetime, for example in our literature and on our web site.