Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Sources: Getty Images
The Beneficiary: “Ryan” is a 32-year-old public servant who recently got married in a small, humble ceremony. “We wanted a bigger event but couldn’t justify the expense,” he says. It would have been friends rather than family for Ryan, however, as his last living family member – his father, a resident in a long-term care home in Britain – died a few months before the wedding. After the celebration, Ryan hopped across the pond to clean out his father’s house and settle his financial affairs.
The Inheritance: Because his mother’s gone and Ryan’s an only child, his father’s wishes were simple and straightforward. “Dad always said I’d get the house and everything in it,” says Ryan. While digging through his dad’s stuff, Ryan found a number of old stock certificates hidden away – literally. “Some of them were tucked between the individual pages of old books,” he says. It turns out that since the early 90s, before Ryan was born, his dad had been buying shares and telling no one.
What he learned: Firstly, a good lesson in procrastination: “I knew it was all going to be too emotional so I was inclined to box everything up for storage and deal with it later,” admits Ryan, who was initially thoroughly convinced there was little of value in the house and probably not worth the hassle of sorting through it all. A cursory Google check of the first certificate Ryan found – a few thousand shares of an oil and gas company that no longer exists – only confirmed his original hunch.
Ryan’s not sure what compelled him, but boy is he glad his curiosity prompted him to ask questions on an anonymous online financial forum. There he found several people chiming in to explain that the certificates are “valuable securities and not just pieces of random paper.” Newly intrigued that maybe these old-timey certificates were legit, Ryan sent a photo to a Canadian CPA back home. His response: “You need to find a U.K. broker tomorrow and a U.K. tax lawyer yesterday.”
That night, Ryan got out a calculator and crunched the numbers for the grand total of his father’s old certificates combined: almost a million pounds ($1.8-million). First thing in the morning, he telephoned a London broker who told Ryan to come see him that very day. “Suddenly I was a very important customer,” he says.
What he did with it: Just like in Canada, there’s technically no inheritance tax in Britain for a beneficiary, but plenty for the estate. “The day you die, the government deems that you have sold all of your assets at the market value,” he explains. His father’s estate owed about £300,000 in taxes, plus the brokerage’s fee and administrative costs, leaving Ryan with more than £700,000, or about $1.3-million. (Ryan’s new wife was fully convinced he was pranking her and is still in shock to this day.)
Despite his sudden surprise fortune, Ryan hasn’t done much with the money just yet. “I paid off the remainder of our student loans, because I knew I should,” he said. He’s since maxed out their TFSAs, FHSA and RRSPs with the help of his bank, which telephoned him mere minutes after the wire transfer landed in his account. Much to the bank’s chagrin, Ryan’s money is sitting in his account as cash doing almost nothing, even though he realizes that he’s missing out on bigger investment opportunities. “I’m very, very risk averse,” says Ryan, who’s hoping he’ll get more comfortable investing someday but it probably won’t be any time soon.
Interestingly, Ryan’s become more stressed about money now that he actually has some. “One of the strangest things about coming into money when you haven’t had money before is the earth-shattering fear that you’ll somehow lose it.” That first night with the calculator, actually, Ryan slept with the box of certificates in his bed with him. That he might have chucked everything that wasn’t a passport or birth certificate is something to keep him up at night. So does the thought that his dad could have afforded much more and better care than he got.
At least so far, Ryan’s surprise inheritance hasn’t changed his life much. “Nothing’s different so far and I’m kinda hoping it will stay that way.” He’s told very few people about his new wealth and nobody at work, though the newlyweds are talking about moving out of their rental to buy a house in a different city. “Nothing fancy though,” he says.
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