I was curious about what happens when a St.Jude raffle house is won, how someone must pay the taxes on the winnings before St.Jude will give away the home. There have been instances across the country where winners who purchased a winning raffle ticket don't get the house because St.Jude requires the winner come forward and claim the prize within 10 days AND must also pay the taxes to the IRS then, too, or they forfeit the house, which St.Jude then keeps and sells, profiting both from the home and from all the raffle tickets sold. Win a $650k house? You better be in a position to fork over $200k in cash or they keep the house and there's no consolation prize. I thought that was fricked up.

No, what's REALLY fricked up in they have a very well-oiled legal, sales and accounting machine that puts St.Jude against the family members of people with large estates, and actively cultivates business relationships with estate planners and attorneys to get them to nudge their elderly clients into making large bequests, with St.Jude employees actively working around the family members trying to convince wealthy possible donors to leave family members out of wills. Even legit wills, they take it to court because they will claim it wasn't really the true intent of the deceased, even playing spouses against the other, and taking heirs all the way to their state's Supreme Court.

Propubica

quote:
“At the end of it, there is very little to hold on to feel good about,” said Vance Lanier, of Lafayette, Louisiana, who won a years long legal battle with St. Jude over his father’s estate but not before both sides spent heavily on the case.

“Think of all the fees for lawyers that didn’t go to St. Jude, not one child, not one cancer patient,” Lanier said. “Where is the sanity in all this?”

Lanier is a financial planner in Lafayette, Louisiana, who helps clients with estate and trust matters. His father, Eugene, died in December 2015. His will directed that $100,000 from the proceeds of the sale of his home go to St. Jude.

But there was a problem. The elder Lanier did not own his home, according to his son. More than a decade earlier he had placed it in a trust, along with other assets, to benefit his three children.

To Lanier, it was a simple matter. St. Jude was not entitled to any money from the house sale. “He had given away his assets to put into a trust,” Lanier said. “My dad did not own it. He could have changed that while he was alive, but he didn’t.”

Still, recognizing that his father did want to make a donation to St. Jude, and hoping to avoid spending money on legal fees, Lanier said he offered St. Jude $25,000 to settle the matter. The offer was rejected, according to Lanier and his attorney, and St. Jude instead pursued the matter in a years long court fight. St. Jude argued that the elder Lanier, through his will, “clearly directed the sale” of the property and that $100,000 of the proceeds should go to the hospital.

A trial court ruled in favor of Vance Lanier. St. Jude appealed that ruling but eventually lost. The charity then asked the state Supreme Court to reverse that ruling, but the request was denied, ending the matter.

Lanier said the legal dispute was expensive for both sides. He spent $50,000 in lawyer fees. Even if St. Jude had won the case, he said, much of the money it would have received from the elder Lanier’s estate would have been wiped out by legal costs. St. Jude did not respond to questions about how much it paid its lawyers.

Lanier said he wrote to the chief executive of St. Jude complaining that the legal fight was a waste of time and the charity’s resources.

Before the estate dispute, Lanier said he and other members of his extended family were supporters of St. Jude and had collectively donated thousands of dollars to the Memphis hospital. That is no longer the case, he said.

The nonprofit even courts those who aid in estate planning and drawing up wills, sponsoring conferences where attorneys, financial advisers and estate professionals gather.

This is a well researched article. I can't slam what they do for children, and I know that care needs to be paid for somehow, but they have billion$ in investment assets, and can operate free and clear without trying to cheat heirs out of their inheritance.

But they don't. Too bad.

*tl;dr, wall of words, etc...

To make amends for the length of my post, I offer you: cool cars and hot girls as my apology:

30 ...

131