An unbelievable amount of money is spent every week on lottery tickets by the population who hope to win the jackpot, but the truth is, the odds of winning are extremely small. And that applies to any lottery in the world. Taking the UK Lotto for example, there is a 1 in 13,983,816 likelihood of winning that lottery and even longer odds of winning the European lotto, which stands at 1 in 76,275,360. Although you are more lightly to win a smaller prize on the Euromillions!
Now, you can place those odds in your favour if say you share the cost together with some friends, work colleagues or even family members. That's ok, but how often have you read, or seen on the TV news, accounts of people who have won the lotto when being part of a syndicate only to deny it afterwards and try to keep all of the winnings to themselves. They might have truly bought the ticket/tickets themselves or perhaps not! Wouldn't it have been so much simpler if they entered into an official syndicate agreement and saved all the inconvenience? You can download a syndicate agreement from the UK National lottery website at: www.national-lottery.co.uk
Therefore, if you've ever debated whether or not to set up a lotto syndicate, here are some valuable hints for you:
Gather your syndicate members together and select your weekly spend. 1 or several of the players may want to spend a lot more than the others in the syndicate, in which case they would purchase twice or three times as many entries then obtain twice or triple portion of whatever profits there are.
Pick someone to manage the syndicate: this would plainly have to be a person that's dependable, well-organized and trusty! They'll have to be responsible for gathering the ticket numbers and buying them. You must not forget that the tickets will have to be bought in the manager's name and you're entirely reliant on them to pay out your profits - therefore decide with wisdom!
Also, you'll need to draw up a lottery syndicate agreement then have it signed, witnessed and date stamped by all the members.
Syndicate agreements are downloadable from the net as mentioned above but unfortunately they will not aid you if your syndicate handler was last seen jumping on an aircraft destined for the Bahamas with all your loot. That said they are a valuable precaution because they lay down the conditions of your agreement in writing.
Getting the agreement signed and witnessed by all players is very useful in as much as it allows members to stipulate what will happen with their percentage of the winnings if they pass away. If set up correctly any percentage of the deceased can be evenly divided between the remaining players or whether it's to be passed on to their estate!
A very significant point here is, whenever the agreement can be demonstrated to have been signed in advance of the winning draw, if so, the prize will be free of death duty as the law presently stands.
The agreement must likewise include the syndicate policy since what will take place, if a member doesn't pay up on time. Will they forgo whatever winnings they think they are owed, or will there be some period of grace?
How much notification must each member give to exit the syndicate? What is the group's policy on publicity in the event of a big win? This could represent some major problem if they are not in agreement in beforehand with a couple players wanting their fifteen minutes of glory and their photographs in the news papers and others wanting to continue completely anonymous, some not even wanting their family and friends to know they've scooped the jackpot!
These are all elements which require agreement with all the parties and must be agreed in advance to avoid whatever problems that may arise later.
