If they plan to use the money to further a drug/drinking/gambling addiction, or to invest/donate to some kind of harmful cause, or something along those lines, donating it may lead to the best outcome.
There are some problems that money can make worse.
And note this is all theoretical. I obviously don’t know these people, and most likely Bertha is completely wrong. But there are situations where adding more money makes things worse.
How - what happened?
Not as far as I know.
I don’t know. Not sure who the trustee is/was.
Well, Ethel died a few weeks ago, so no one is talking to her and vice versa. When she died, she was still estranged from both daughters. Her son was in touch with her, but I don’t know if they ever had a really happy relationship.
No idea who has the money or where it is now.
That might justify Bertha in declining to act as executor. But it doesn’t justify her in taking someone else’s money, and using it as she thinks they ought to use it.
So you’re backpedaling now? Originally you said it would be moral to set up the trust if Bertha thought they would “waste” the inheritance. It must be nice to be so morally superior you feel comfortable judging whether others are wasting their money.
But the heirs are legally entitled to the money. This would be akin to as if an employer said, “My employee is an alcoholic and will just blow the money on booze, so I will donate his salary to charity instead.”
Is there any chance the “trust” is nothing more than Bertha’s own bank account?
So if you owed your sister $200, and you knew she’d immediately spend it on enough heroin to OD and leave her kids orphaned, you wouldn’t do some soul searching about how to handle the situation?