I’d be grateful to you all for solutions regarding a tricky contingency requested by a client here in the BVI: each legatee must reach “twenty five years old and have obtained a Bachelor’s Degree”.
While the objective of education is commendable, clearly one can obtain a full legal Bachelor’s Degree within minutes from one of the many websites offering “instant degrees" and I’m not sure the ways to tighten the contingency work ("…from a reputable university", but what is reputable? Google suggests the eg UNESCO list of universities is very incomplete, and obviously cannot look into the future), nor does it cover the situation where the beneficiary wishes to enter a profession for which a Bachelor’s Degree is unneccessary or inadvisable.
I have been toying with “attended a tertiary education course involving full time study of at least two years length” or similar (even that excludes some respected vocational qualifications), but wondered if there is a more elegant solution.
Clearly, I wish it was not there at all, it feeling very discriminatory. There is an equivalent to s32 TA, though I suspect the client will wish to exclude it, and I’m thinking about recommending an alternative (eg 25 and a Degree or 30 without a Degree) as ways to mitigate the harshness.
Matthew Howson
Harney Westwood and Riegels