STEPHANELALIBERTE - Good question! Quite a story. . . .
So, right after this guy dies, I'm talking to a "brother" neighbor of mine who actually goes to a different cong. He tells me that he was out in service and ran into a "worldly" friend of the deceased brother who is PISSED (angry, not drunk) at the local congregation. Why?
Evidently this deceased brother originally wanted his $250K to go to THE SOCIETY. Before his death, though, he was visited by two elders from the hall who had been working on the new kingdom hall project. According to this "worldly" friend, the elders pressured the elderly brother to leave the money to the local congregation rather than the society. Their reasoning was that if he left the money to the society, the congregation wouldn't see a DIME of it. However, if he left it to the cong, they would be able to use the $$ for the new hall. Evidently, the elderly bro was rather peeved about being "strongarmed" by the elders and complained to his worldly pal.
However he did end up leaving the money to the local cong. The donation was announced to the congregation with quite a flourish after the brother's death. The elder making the announcement (one of the ones who pressured the elderly bro) described how for in order for the new KH project to go forward, we needed just about $250k in cash and -- VOILA! --- Jehovah provided by killing off this elderly brother, and we're moving ahead with site work.
As to how I know the money was taken by the society under the new LDC arrangement: My BIL is an elder in the neighboring cong and he says that's exactly what happened. It's GONE. Of course no special announcement was made about that. . . . ..