What are the Lottery winnings?

What to do with office lottery winnings?

• Can anyone think of any ideas? Usually you just take the winnings and add them to next weeks drawing. But the problem there is that not everyone gets in every week, so if you win, you have to figure out if you won with a ticket from last weeks extra money or whether or not to split, and then it gets messy and complicated. Any other suggestions?

• Answer:

  Get everything in writing and give everyone a copy of the writing. You'll need it if you ever win a significant prize. For example. 20 folks in the office join your pool for $5 each. You buy 100 tickets and win $13 with those tickets. You can choose to distribute the $13 to the participants but that's messy. It's easier just to roll the $13 into next weeks drawing. Next week comes along and Mary wants to join your pool. You have now collected $105 + the $13. You buy 118 tickets but 13 of those tickets should be kept separate from the other 105 on a separate sheet of paper. Pass the sheets out to all the players and be sure to mark which ones belong to Mary and which don't. Or you could just be generous and agree ahead of time that Mary will be included in any winnings from those 13 tickets. If so, GET IT IN WRITING!!! It may not sound important now, but this is where many many lottery lawsuits get started. On the other hand, let's say Tom quit last week and moved on to a better job. You now only have 19 players in your pool, but 13 of those tickets belong to Tom as well. Again, keep those 13 separate from your main pool and put Tom's name on them. Make photocopies of all the tickets and pass out the photocopies to everyone. These copies should include the full names of everyone in your pool. Any separate tickets from past winnings should also have the names of the folks that they belong to. You also need to agree ahead of time what you'll do with the small winnings. If you only win $13 its easy to say we'll just roll it into next weeks drawing, but what if you win $175 instead? Some players might want to take the cash and some might want to roll it into the next drawing for more chances. Usually the best thing to do is to pay out as much as possible evenly among the players. If you have 20 players and $175 in winnings then pay each person $8 and roll the extra $15 into the next drawing. Again, put it in writing how you'll distribute the winnings and how much gets rolled over.