Hi Diane.  That’s a really great question for which thank you!  It actually comes up quite a lot in practice.  The answer is yes, you can choose that to balance payments.  You do have other options too.  The first is to adjust the residuary percentages in the will, but that can be fiddly.  The other (and my preferred method) is to keep the residuary payments as were, but then include a direction in the will that any lifetime  gifts will be taken into account when calculating payments.  There are benefits of this perhaps most notably that if the ‘debt changes’ during your lifetime (eg some of it is repaid to you of you make other gifts to other children), then you can simply record that outside of the will, and don’t have the hassle or cost of updating the will.

As I say, this comes up a lot in practice Diane and with that in mind, we’ve made a note to post a full blog on it in the new year.  Are you OK with us referencing your question in the blog?

Kindest regards from all at Team Qlaw