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A reminiscence. It concerns an elderly and wealthy woman whose only relatives were the children of her deceased siblings. She showed signs of playing them off against each other and they were not having it - but they did not entirely trust each other either.

So they executed a deed to share equally the total of what she left any of them. The deed was to be kept by a solicitor who had written instructions from them all to keep it secret till she died and then give them all a copy and the original to the executors.

And it worked. None of them had any motive to suck up to Auntie and they all had a motive to keep her sweet and not thinking about charities. There was over a million pounds after IHT and only £10,000 went to charity!