Tycoon died with family in plane crash – so £41m fortune goes to Oxfam
A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE catering firm boss killed with his family in a seaplane crash left £41million of his fortune to Oxfam.
Richard Cousins, 58, had planned to leave most of his wealth to his sons, Will, 25 and Ed, 23.
But a year before his death he inserted a ‘common tragedy clause’ into his will, which made the charity his main beneficiary if he was killed alongside his immediate family.
Mr Cousins, the chief executive of £25billion catering firm Compass, died with his sons, his fiancee Emma Bowden, 48, and her daughter Heather, 11, on New Year’s Eve last year in Australia.
Their DHC-2 Beaver aircraft plunged into the Hawkesbury River in Sydney, killing them and their Canadian pilot Gareth Morgan, 44.
Now all but £3million of Mr Cousins’ fortune will go to the charity.
The change to his will and his death both preceded the revelations earlier this year of Oxfam aid workers using prostitutes in Haiti.
The businessman’s brothers Simon and Andrew will get £1million each. Mr Cousins had planned to marry Mrs Bowden in July this year after his first wife died of cancer in 2015.
His former brother-in-law, Ian Thorpe said the catering tycoon had decided to quit his £5.6million job to spend quality time with his fiancee, a magazine editor, and ‘be a dad again’. Mr Thorpe said the multi-millionaire, from Hyde Heath, Buckinghamshire, was tired of the stress of being a chief executive and had planned to retire in March this year.
A ‘common tragedy clause’ is a provision for where your estate will go if all your immediate family die at the same time as you.
If such a clause is not included in your will, the money is allocated through the rules of intestacy. This means lawyers work through a list of family members until they find someone alive who is eligible to inherit the estate. Mr Cousins’ bequest is a boost to Oxfam, which has been shaken by the claims staff preyed on sex workers following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The charity said: ‘We’re working with the family and our board to identify how the money will be used.’