3,035 words
Please consider a bequest to Counter-Currents in your will. Your simple provision today could sustain our work far into the future. What follows is information on benefitting the movement through your will, drawn from American Renaissance, the Institute for Historical Review, and Instauration:
American Renaissance recommends using very precise language, which we have adopted to the particulars of Counter-Currents:
- A Specific Bequest states a specific dollar amount or names specific properties, such as stocks. The wording can be quite simple: “I give to Counter-Currents Publishing, PO Box 22638, San Francisco, CA 94122, web address www.counter-currents.com, federal tax ID number 273114965, the sum of __________ dollars [or describe specific properties] to be used in such a manner as its owner may decide.”
- A Residual Bequest disposes of what is left of your estate after specific bequests, taxes, creditors’ claims, and expenses. Use this language: “I give to Counter-Currents Publishing, PO Box 22638, San Francisco, CA 94122, web address www.counter-currents.com, federal tax ID number 273114965, all (or ____ percent) of the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate, both real and personal property of whatever kind and wheresoever situated, to be used in such a manner as its owner may decide.”
- A Contingent Bequest is made when one or more of your other bequests cannot be made, for instance if one of your beneficiaries predeceases you. Use this language: “If any of the above-named beneficiaries should predecease me, I hereby give his or her share of my estate to Counter-Currents Publishing, PO Box 22638, San Francisco, CA 94122, web address www.counter-currents.com, federal tax ID number 273114965, to be used in such a manner as its owner may decide.”
- A life income bequest allows you to leave an income generated by your estate to a beneficiary, with the principal that generates that income passing to Counter-Currents after that person has died. Such bequests should be drafted by a lawyer.
Here are further recommendations from American Renaissance for making out your will:
- Include the phrase: “I am not unmindful nor under undue influence.” This protects against dishonest people claiming you were feeble-minded or pressured into writing your will as you did.
- Also include the phrase, “No executor or trustee of a trust created under my Will shall be required to post bond.” This helps ensure that the bulk of your money goes to the intended recipients and doesn’t get wasted on fees.
- Make copies of your will. If a will is not found, it is considered revoked. We advise making one copy for every recipient in your will, and sending it to them. Also make a copy and keep it in a safety deposit box.
- You should always consult a lawyer and/or a tax advisor when drawing up or revising your will to ensure your intentions are carried out properly.
Other Ways You Can Bequeath Money to Counter-Currents:
- Banks and retirement accounts allow you to specify who inherits your account when you die. This simplifies matters immensely by keeping the courts out of your inheritance planning. While you are alive, the money is entirely accessible to you and only you.
- You can make Counter-Currents a beneficiary of your life insurance policy, either in part or in full.
- An additional way of avoiding any challenge to your will by flying “under the radar” is to make a bequest to individuals, not to organizations, as an individual’s name is less likely to raise political red flags.
If you have any questions, please contact Greg Johnson at [email protected].
“Majority Estate Planning”
The following article, “Majority Estate Planning,” was written by Sam Dickson and published anonymously in Instauration. It gives useful advice for avoiding challenges to wills.
An Instaurationist attorney tells us how to write wills favoring our friends, not our enemies
All too many Majority members are childless. Having escaped the financial burdens imposed by children, if they exercise reasonable financial acumen, they have a better than average chance of accumulating a sizable estate. Eventually the time will come when these well-to-do or moderately well-to-do individuals will write their wills.
At least a few of them may stop and consider that in a sense their race is their family, since they have had no children of their own. They may feel, as I do, that some special act on their part is called for to compensate for their failure to reproduce.
Why should committed Majority members leave their estates to distant relatives who share none of their racial commitment and who may be dedicated race-mixers and professional liberals? Why should they help subsidize institutions and colleges (often their alma maters) which have fallen into equalitarian or minority hands and for years have used their ample educational resources to denigrate and demean Western culture? Should not the last act of a dying person reflect his or her most deeply held convictions?
While particularly appropriate for the childless Majority member who leaves no direct heirs, this all-important “last act” should also be taken by the Majority member with substantial financial assets who has children, but who can still afford to make a bequest, even though small in comparison with his or her entire estate.
There are basically two forms of bequests that should be considered by people about to write or rewrite their wills. First, and most obvious, is the direct gift in money, stocks or other assets. The second consists of items of intrinsic value such as books, pamphlets and records, even libraries. Whoever possesses literature of a special value to the Majority cause should see that it is preserved and placed in the hands of those who can put it to the best use.
Several years ago I met an outstanding Majority activist. Advanced in years, she now lives in seclusion surrounded by her vast collection of irreplaceable books, newspapers, and records, accumulated over half a century of searching for reasons for the decline of her people. Such an archive is now virtually nonexistent, since most of them were systematically destroyed or thrown away in the hysteria and repression that followed America’s entry into World War II.
How tragic that such valuable writings, on the off chance they manage to survive, should pass into the hands of relatives who view them as worthless junk and who will probably destroy them in the course of the administration of the estate!
How to Avoid Challenges
Majority members who desire to make bequests to Majority causes should prudently and carefully draw their wills so as to anticipate and forestall challenges. A number of significant legacies and bequests of this type have been overturned because of a lack of foresight. For instance, an American multimillionaire left a fortune in Chilean minerals to the British nationalist journal, Candour. His relatives, aided by minority lawyers, quickly and easily overturned the will, and Candour received nothing.
Here are a few ways a wary testator can defeat or discourage challenges:
First, he should realize the foolishness of incorporating racist credos or other statements in his will. He should understand that any blatant or controversial statements will immediately tip off leftist and minority group members who will then be inspired to have the will set aside. Many liberals actually view a respect for one’s race as a form of mental illness. Any racial statement or connection appearing in a will may be taken as prima facie evidence that the testator was deranged or incompetent. For this reason the bequest should be worded in terse, subdued, standard legal language, omitting any and all ideological remarks or allusions.
The testator should never include such a statement as: “In order to perpetuate my lifelong opposition to the dangers presented to this country by blacks, Mexicans, and Indians and to promote the welfare of the superior white race, I give and bequeath the sum of $10,000 to the Anglo-Saxon Federation, Inc.”
Instead, the will should simply read, “I give and bequeath the sum of $10,000 to the Anglo-Saxon Federation, Inc., to be used in such a manner as its directors shall decide.”
The testator should always anticipate that his relatives may challenge the will unless it is carefully worded to discourage any contest. Since money motivates even the best of us, it is unwise to indulge in the illusion that our relatives and heirs at law will not attempt to challenge a will if a successful challenge will bring them financial gain.
To forestall the contesting of a will, it is necessary to understand something about how such contests come about. Wills may be caveated (the legal term for contesting or challenging) only by those with proper qualifications. This means that in most cases wills are challenged by the heirs at law. Who is an heir at law? This depends on the laws of the particular state in which the testator resides. Before a will is written the laws of one’s state must be carefully checked to find out who exactly qualifies as an heir at law. As an example, Georgia law states basically that a person’s heirs at law are his spouse and children. An unmarried person’s heirs at law are his parents, brothers, and sisters. Nephews and nieces of a deceased brother or sister inherit in the place of their deceased parent. If the testator has no wife, children, brothers, sisters, or parents living, then his grandparents and any aunts and uncles and their offspring become his heirs at law.
Wills are usually challenged on two grounds: (1) undue influence, or (2) incompetency. Undue influence is influence which prevents the testator and his natural heirs from enjoying a normal affection and prevents the testator from expressing his true intent. For example, the son who persuades his mother to move into his house and then intercepts letters and phone calls from another son is exerting undue influence.
The greatest source of danger for the testator who wants to aid organizations or individuals who share his beliefs is the challenge based on incompetency. The usual form of challenge on these grounds is that the bequest demonstrates the testator to be mentally incompetent, because only a mentally incompetent person in this era of berserk equalitarianism and liberalism would prefer his own kind over another ethnic group or would wish to support an organization or person publicly advocating racial differences. This type of attack is certain to become more successful as the country’s demographic complexion darkens. Attorneys representing Negroes, Hispanics, Jews, and other minorities will be quick to set such wills aside in order to reduce the threat of an effective opposition to minority racism. The recent attempt of various Jewish organizations to overturn the will of a fellow Jew, who left $25,000 to the PLO, has been in all the newspapers. In my own law practice I was once engaged by the heirs of a Palestinian who died intestate (leaving no will) in New York. The Jewish judge appointed a swarm of minority lawyers as administrators and guardians with the result that every cent of the Arab’s small estate was eventually depleted in the form of attorney fees. The judge found nothing amiss in all this and denied my objections on behalf of the heirs. With this example in mind, it is not difficult to predict what would happen to a will that contained even the slightest connotation of “white racism.”
In Terrorem Clause
A will, as previously stated, can only be challenged by an heir at law. The general public does not have the right of challenge. One effective means of reducing the possibility of challenges is to leave the heirs at law a fair and equitable portion of the estate and to write into the will what is known as an in terrorem clause. This provides that anyone who challenges the will and who is unsuccessful in his challenge will lose everything he would have inherited under the will. Below is a typical in terrorem clause, which I have used successfully for a few of my own clients:
It is my wish and I do hereby direct that if any legatee or legatees named in my will shall contest this my last will and testament in any court, or if they or any one of them shall aid or encourage any other person in the contest of this will, he, she or they shall forfeit all interest in my estate and the legacies given them shall be forfeited and become a part of my residuary estate. I do not anticipate, nor have any reason to anticipate, that any legatee provided for in this my last will and testament will contest same, but I make this provision so that there will be no contention or litigation over any matter relating to my estate or the disposition of the property of my estate as set out in this my last will and testament, which I deem to be just and equitable.
Obviously such a clause will have no deterrent effect if the heir is left out of the will completely. If an heir stands to receive nothing at all, then he has every reason to challenge the will.
As to disinheriting wayward heirs, I am afraid I must sound a discouraging note. We have all read of parents writing straying offspring out of their wills—an all-too-human attempt to get in one last kick at some obnoxious relative. Alas, the Majority testator with the best interests of his race at heart must forget this idea. A disinherited heir at law is an heir at law who will have everything to gain and nothing to lose by challenging the will. No matter how annoying and embarrassing this relative may have been to the testator in the latter’s lifetime, imagine the effect on a jury, especially one weighted down with several minority members, when the disinherited heir breaks down on the stand into sobs about poor, beloved Aunt Agatha, whose mind was poisoned against the heir by conniving racial bigots who surrounded her in her last moments. Most of us have been required to do many distasteful things and endure many unpleasant associations in our struggle for racial survival. Including the obnoxious relative in your will will be the last manifestation of this regrettable necessity.
The strategy, then, is to include all your heirs at law in your will and add an in terrorem clause. Since we live in a legal environment hostile to our ideas, we cannot expect to leave all of our estate to further the Majority cause, even if we so desire. Those who wish to leave us money and those who wish to receive it must be content with a reasonable amount.
It is up to the testator to determine what proportion of his estate should be left to the heirs in order to make a challenge or series of challenges not worth the risk of losing more than the challengers would gain, not worth the risk of paying out more in legal fees than they could possibly win even in a favorable outcome. Perhaps I can best explain how a prudent person would dispose of his estate by giving the facts of my own situation.
My heirs, provided both my parents die before I do, would be my two brothers. One is an avowed Marxist who has been commissioned by a large foundation to draw up a program to eradicate racial and religious bigotry in America. It is clear that he would be delighted to challenge my will to head off any pro-Majority bequest. However, he has one vulnerable point. Although he loves Lenin, he loves money even more, perhaps because he has never been able to accumulate much of it.
I bequeathed this particular brother a substantial inheritance in my will, but an amount less than he is legally entitled to by law. I am relying on the in terrorem clause to scare him away from any challenge. Since he would receive one-half of my estate if I died intestate, I have left him one-third.
This means that my Marxist sibling will be confronted with a choice of taking his third under the will or placing himself in jeopardy of losing out altogether by filing a challenge and losing. If his challenge should be successful, he will take one-half of the estate, minus his legal fees and expenses. I anticipate that, after weighing the odds, he will settle for one-third. As for my second brother, who shares some of my ideas, I know he will be quite content with his one-third share and will have no objection to my bequest of the remaining third to a pro-Majority organization.
Independent Executor
The Majority testator should name an independent executor under his will, preferably a capable, trusted, and honest lawyer (a few such still exist). The reason is that the will must be defended by the executor. A lawyer named as executor will have a direct pecuniary interest in sustaining the will against any and all challenges because he wants to get his fee for administering the estate. A relative and heir as an executor might be tempted to give up or compromise rather than fight a challenge to the bitter end. The lawyer-executor has another good reason for doing his best to defend the will. He is entitled by law to a small percentage of the estate, which he would lose if the will were overturned.
Some Majority members may fear adverse publicity as a result of their bequest. They should be reassured that only rarely is any publicity attached to the probate and administration of estates. There will almost certainly be no publicity at all if the will is written so as to minimize the possibility of a challenge.
Those sensitive souls who, for one reason or another, still cannot bring themselves to make a bequest to the defenders of their people, might investigate the idea of a small life insurance policy, naming some Majority activist as the beneficiary.
To sum up, the Majority member who leaves a properly drawn will be benefiting one or more members of his extended racial family or benefiting some Majority activist group will have the comfort of knowing that, even if he hasn’t done as much in his lifetime as he would have liked, he will be fighting the good fight for years and years after his death.
Instauration, November 1982, pp. 10–12.
