Freddie and the dreaming of a large estate?

With a stream of ten hit singles and LPs (as they were called in the sixties) and number one’s in both the UK and America, and various parts of the world, you would have thought that Freddie Garrity of Freddie And The Dreamers fame would have built up a good cash asset reserve during his lifetime. He died at the age of 69, some 43 years after his first hit.

When you consider the royalties for performing on all those songs and the fact that they’re still played on the radio channels across the world today and that he wrote some of those songs so that’s further royalty payments, it comes as a surprise that he left just £244,000; not even enough to pay any inheritance tax. That may sound a lot to some people, but not for someone that had so many hit records and has some 15+ CDs available on Amazon and the like.

Also, we must not forget that he toured the world for most of those 43 years. He ended the group in the late sixties only to reform them (with a new backing band) in the mid seventies and played the world for another 25 years before becoming ill and unable to gig any more.

It just goes to show you that either he has a cunning master plan in his will, money in trusts somewhere, has given away his assets in plenty of time to avoid potentially exempt transfers tax or he just genuinely spent his money as time went on.

This writer saw Freddie Garrity perform live in 1964, 1985 and 1999 and each time to full concert halls of over a few thousand people. So where did the money go?

The point being made here is that whatever you do during life you don’t know how much you’ll have at the end. You may lose it all; you may win a large lottery prize too late to use it properly. You can only plan for what you ‘believe’ will be the targets at such time that is also unknown. Perhaps, due to Freddie’s illness in 2001 he had time to plan differently during his last five years. It also reminds you that you must always review your Will regularly (at least annually), whenever your finances and circumstances change and speak with your LSUK consultant to see if you need to update your last document.

Must go and select a CD to play to bring back those memories…

Filed under: Legal Advice