Our mortal
powerlessness
Yesterday marked a
decade since the passing of my friend and mentor John Coll. As a blogger, I
would normally have written something to commemorate and memorialise the day.
The blog I wrote last year was meant for yesterday, I was a year off.
Blog - John
Coll: Friend, Mentor, Gentleman – January 2015
Blog - John
Coll: Calling on Herbert Dzinotyiweyi to fulfil his wishes – December 2013
Much as I want to
reflect on our friendship, there are issues of understanding trust and the
powerlessness of keeping that trust when you are no longer in the picture.
It brings to mind
when Queen Elizabeth II gave her Christmas message desiring that the Duchess of
Cornwall as the spouse of the Prince of Wales become the Queen Consort when he
assumes the throne. That wish lasted until the coronation of King Charles III
when he as king regnant decided his consort would be crowned Queen.
The clear message
there is that regardless of the desires of the much-loved Queen, once she joined
her ancestors, the powerful effect of her determination had gone with her
passing. There is only one monarch in a kingdom and this time, it was Charles
III, we had left the Second Elizabethan era for the new Carolean age from the 8th of
September 2022.
The danger of a sole
executor
In the affairs of
life, we exercise both choice and control to varying extents, our presence
enables us to order, arrange, and challenge situations to align with our liking
and expectations. However, in our passing, where we cannot exercise control or
authority, we rely on trusted persons to fulfil our wills, testaments and
bequeaths.
There is a clear
basis for an executor of an estate and there is law and precept that governs
that responsibility, yet it can be abused. John chose the ‘trusted’ financial
manager of his company to execute his will, whether it would have been prudent
to distribute that responsibility seeing that John had been an employer of
labour and skill for decades is another thing.
When John passed on,
the primary elements of his will, such as his funeral and the disposal of his
estate were followed through and seemingly completed quite promptly. The other
part of his will which included bequests to 10 individuals, mostly outside the
UK did not get fulfilment.
Once the executor had
seen the largesse of the estate the trust reposed in him evaporated into
avarice and over years, he schemed to transfer the full value of the estate
after probate of about £780,000 to himself. He might have siphoned it out of
the country or gambled it away, but he also had another plan, for he had
citizenship of Zimbabwe and naturalisation in the UK.
I was onto him in
2019 when I learnt that most beneficiaries of John’s will had not been
informed, and those who should have known were kept from prying because the
executor feigned complexity of managing the estate and the required taxes.
He escaped
accountability and justice
As I was not a
beneficiary, I could only inform and instigate in the hope that John’s wishes
would be fulfilled, and accountability is looked for as pertains to the
fiduciary duty of an executor. Sadly, the police mishandled the situation and
allowed the executor a window of opportunity to escape justice leaving the
beneficiaries bilked of consequential resources that could have been impactful
on their lives if John’s wishes had been conducted.
The lesson here is
not only in choosing a trusted lieutenant or friend to execute your estate,
especially in the absence of close relations to do the same but in distributing
that responsibility so that the executors can hold each other accountable and true
to the requirements of the testator.
Whether John had any
insight into the character or integrity of his executor, one cannot tell, but
with hindsight, the executor was anything but trustworthy. Mortal man is at a
loss, for a will has no enforcement until the person is confirmed dead and the
same person is powerless to ensure that their will is totally implemented
according to the spirit and the letter of will.
A thought on
accountable executors
As a man of faith,
one of the reasons why Jesus Christ had to rise again from the dead was that
the will for man to have eternal life and a relationship with God came into
force with His death and the shedding of His blood for our sins. He rose again
to ensure his testament was followed completely, that in accepting His
sacrifice on the cross and declaring Him Lord, He confers the same sonship He
has with God the Father on us too.
Imagine if, at the
implementation of a will, the testator had the means to ensure every jot and
title of their will was fully done without any challenge to the executor or
resorting to the courts to redefine or alter your intention, purpose, and
desire. Trust is a fleeting commodity, when it comes to executing a will,
please ensure you have built extensive accountability into the process.
It is not John’s
fault that things turned out this way, I never had reason to question either
his instinct or his judgment when he was alive, people change and when it comes
to money and worse still, the love of money, it is the root of all evil, the unconscionable
evil that consumed Herbert Dzinotyiweyi.
