Can you leave money to a terrorist group in your will? Would a lawyer simply tell you that you can’t do that, and tell you to leave it to someone else, or would they let you put it in there knowing that it’s not going to ever be paid out?
Also, could you leave it to, for example, North Korea?
My first guess is that your will could do anything you wanted it to do.
Will it actually be carried out? Probably not - the executor is not compelled to do anything illegal.
Then my question could be phrased:
“Is it illegal to leave money to terrorists or a place like North Korea in your will?”
You can put anything you want in your will. What matters legally is what would happen during the probate process after you die. As Dag points out, the executor and probate court aren’t going to allow the estate to do something illegal, and giving money to terrorist groups definitely qualifies.
If it would have been an offence for you to give money to this person or group, then it would be an offence for your executors, so they aren’t required to do it.
You can put anything in a will provided it’s not illegal and not against “public policy”
For instance, you could leave money to the City of Chicago to establish a park. And put in your will blacks and Asians can’t enter it. The city could take the money and build the park. But since it’s illegal to discriminate, you couldn’t have the “no blacks and/or Asians” part enforced. This was actually a court case
You also can’t restrict things that go against public policy. For instance, a husband can’t say a wife gets nothing if she gets remarried. Name changes are another. That so and so only gets money if they change their name to the dead person’s name. This has been ruled a violation of public policy
You can also petition for the court to change the intent if it’s old. For instance, if your Uncle Buck is going to die and you’re 17 and he leaves you $50,000 with the proviso you go to college. Then Uncle Buck gets well and doesn’t die till 50 years later. Now you’re 67 years old and he never changed his will. Well this is a situation where courts have ruled both ways. Some will allow the money to be transferred others will uphold the intention.
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, there is, or at least was, a such thing as a “name and arms clause” that is a clause in the will specifying that an inheritance is dependent on the beneficiary adopting the last name and coat of arms of the deceased. I wouldn’t be surprised if these are against public policy here in the US nowadays, and that this type of clause may be more applicable to British aristocracy.
Anyway, I read somewhere that there are basically certain conditions that you can’t specify as conditions for an inheritance. Another of them seems to be religious conversions, e.g. you can’t leave 50k to your nephew if and only if he becomes a Mormon.
Now, if the clause got into a will, what the probate court would do would probably be dependent on local law - either the entire will is going to be tossed, the entire grant with the offending condition will be tossed, or the offending condition will simply be ignored, so that “My nephew Joe gets 50k if and only if he joins the LDS church”, becomes “My nephew Joe gets 50k.”