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Did you know that if you die without a will there’s a chance your property will end up in the hands of Prince Charles?
In Britain everything must be owned by someone – that’s the law. If no rightful owners of property can be traced then it is claimed by the Treasury. That is unless the property happens to be on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall or the Duchy of Lancaster, in which case it goes to them.
It’s called Bona Vacantia, but could more accurately be described as a ‘nice little earner’ not only for the Crown, but also for the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall – the profits of which are handed to the Queen and Prince Charles respectively.
The Latin term “Bona vacantia” (literally ‘vacant goods’) means, in a UK legal context: “goods without an owner,” or “empty property” and is used to describe what happens to, chiefly, three groups of assets:
1. Treasure trove found items.
2. the assets of those who die without a will or surviving relatives (intestacy)
3. the assets of companies that become bankrupt, or are wound up, for which ownership cannot be traced.
In English law, title to property must belong to, or be ‘vested in’, an identifiable person or body. No property or goods are ownerless. If legal ownership cannot be established by anyone else, it falls to the Crown to deal with the assets concerned. In most of England and Wales, the Treasury Solicitor handles such cases but in the case of the two Duchies, the administration is dealt with by a firm of solicitors, Farrer and Co.
If you visit the Duchy of Cornwall website to look at the accounts for the year 2005-6 you may not fully appreciate the meaning of the small section headed “Bona Vacantia” and their extremely brief explanation of this term: “Under Bona Vacantia, the estate of a person who dies in Cornwall with no will or surviving relatives passes to the Duchy of Cornwall.”
You may be aware that the property of those dying intestate goes to the Duchy, but this rule also applies to Treasure Trove and assets of companies for which ownership cannot be traced including some pension fund surpluses. What is not mentioned on the Duchy website is that, according to the Inland Revenue & Customs, Bona Vacantia also covers the property and rights that were beneficially owned by dissolved companies.
When one of the Duchies receives money from Bona Vacantia it does not have to pay tax on it.
Charles claims that the money he receives in this way is paid into his charitable Trust (his Trust). However, you only have to look at the accounts to see that, before this happens, a very large slice is deducted as “expenses” (administration costs) for receiving and handling this money.
The Board of the Duchy of Cornwall has refused a request by the Treasury Select Committee to allow them to examine the audited accounts, claiming that the Duchy is a well-run private business. Strange then that this entity does not mind receiving money that have arisen from the businesses and estates of the ordinary tax-payer simply because it was classed as Bona Vacantia.
A more appropriate home for this money might be a compensation fund for those who have lost pension funds or savings because their employers have gone bust. Where it goes, there is no reason for it to go into the pockets of Charles or Elizabeth Windsor.
Tags: Bona Vacantia
February 24th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
If they want my property, they’ll have to take it from my cold, dead hand.
Oh, hang on….
February 25th, 2009 at 10:48 am
There’s another word for this sort of practice: feudalism. And it should be outlawed.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Brit.in.Aussie – there’s yet another possibly more accurate word for this – Thievery.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I am appalled by how often the Royal Family refuse to submit their business dealings for full parliamentary scrutiny. This came up on the Dispatches programme as well. The Windsors are incredibly well funded by the taxpayer already, they are incredibly wealthy too. Their wealth makes them secretive, but their extensive recourse to public money should bring all their accounts and those of their subsidiaries they have squirrelled away into the light of full public scrutiny. While The Treasury talks of closing loopholes in public accounting, they are missing the fact that the monarchy is on giant feudal loophole.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Just one of the many rights and perogatives that the Duchy has over the territory of Cornwall.
The de jure constitutional status of Cornwall is similar to that of a Crown Protectorate even if it is run de facto as an English county.
Perhaps you can see why they want to keep this quiet.
Much more on the Duchy here: http://duchyofcornwall.eu/
Recently an article written for Cornish World by John Kirkhope B.A. (Hons.), LL.B.(Hons.), Dip. N.P., TEP Notary Public, Non Practising Solicitor (not Cornish BTW) totally debunked the lies promulgated by the current Duchy authority and UK government which usually run along the lines of “the Duchy of Cornwall is just a private estate” and “it has no connection to the territory of Cornwall”.
Kirkhope listed the quite extraordinary number of rights and prerogatives the Duchy has over the territory of Cornwall and added:
“”At a time when Cornwall, economically, needs bolstering and the government of Cornwall is in apparent upheaval perhaps the legal status of Cornwall and the monies generated by the Duchy need to be made transparent rather than suffer the murkiness of misinformation.”"
Kirkhope has met with two of our Cornish MP’s, Dan Rogerson and Andrew George, in Westminster to discuss the above. Both expressed regret at the governments unwillingness to tell the truth regarding the status of the Duchy of Cornwall.
April 4th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
I have no particular love for the monarchy but I suspect that an elected politician would be far more professional in fleecing us. President Mandelson, nein danke!
[Feel free to replace 'Mandelson' with any of a long list of politicians ...
Tony McNulty, Jeffrey Archer, Bill Butler, Jacqui Smith, Brian Gibbon, Alex Fergusson, Derek Conway, Nick Bourne, Ann and Alan Keen, Gerry Adams, George Osborne, Yvette Cooper, Caroline Spelman, Jonathan Aitken ... etc etc ...]
May 13th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
I am not so sure that an elected politician for President would find it easy to fleece the people.They might be potentially able to do this, but there would be very careful scrutiny,especially after all the recent hubbub about political exploitation of expenses etc.The “fleecing” done at present by royalty has been obscured for far too long,because of the quasi-mystical nature of royalty. Incidentally,why on earth would Mandelson,with his record,be chosen anyway.It is easy to fall into the trap of imagining “unpleasant,unsatisfactory ” characters as potential presidents and using that as an excuse not to be red blooded about having a British republic.