Estate disposition when absolutely no heirs

Factual Questions
1

I’m not entirely sure that this is factual enough for GQ. Apologies if it isn’t

Scenario:

Scrooge McDuck outlives his nephews and, without a family member in the world, dies himself. For some reason he wants absolutely no-one to benefit from his great wealth, so leaves a will stipulating that his fortune is to be destroyed.
Now I believe it is illegal to destroy legal tender, so for this scenario his wealth is to be converted into a destroyable form, ie buy a few dozen Old Masters and burn them, or convert it into Bullion and dump it in the Marianas trench (or some other
inaccessible place of your choice).

Now if he hadn’t left a will his estate would have reverted to the Government. The question is, would such a will be honored,or would the government legislate to seize the estate and stop the fortune being wasted?

Assume the government is the UK or US govt (would it make a difference between the 2?)

2

Interesting.

First question would be “Would the goverment notice” ? If he had a bunch of stuff and his will just said ‘burn it’ then I doubt it.

Speculating a bit, if he had any land, houses, or recognised works of art there would probably be legal barriers to destroying them and also sufficent outcry from art lovers/historians/locals etc.

And if the will stated ‘no-one benefits’ it’s possible that getting rid of legal tender by buying stuff could be seen as benefiting people.

Rather than destroy the wealth he could just make it inaccessible (either in ocean as you suggest or electronically in a cash fund somewhere – although technically whomever was holding the fund could benefit).

Someone wiser than me will be along shortly I’d expect.

SD

3

This is definitely not someone wiser. This is someone who saw Mystery on PBS once. A disapproving uncle had all of his assets converted into gold then made a will stipulating that his relatives bury him at sea in this home made ‘lead’ coffin to qualify as heirs. That would probably work.

Of course in the show there was another twist at the end.

4

Since you are making a lot of assumptions, let’s us also assume that no executor is appointed. The execution of the will Then falls to the ‘state’ (read gov’t.)
In either case when the will goes to probate court it will more than likely that the state will appropriate all of the deceased assets.The state will dispose of all real estate and property for the benefit of the state.
In any event the laws of the jurisdiction will prevail, regardless of the stipultions of the will.

5

IAAL, but IANA Wills, Trusts, and Estates L. However, my wife is, so here is some of the knowledge I’ve gleaned off of her over the years:

First of all, I think you have given enough info in your post. Second, good point about the destroying legal tender business.

Now onto business - Scrooge, or for the purposes of this example, let’s call him Bill Gates :wink: , has left a will. The will appoints an executor. This is the person who will carry out the provisions of the will.

Others with more experience can contradict me (feel free), but the gist of it is, the executor has to do what the will says. If the will says, “Take all of my billions of shares of Microsoft stock, sell them, take the money and keep on buying $100 billion worth of McDonald’s Happy Meals until you’ve exhausted all the proceeds, and then bury them all in a landfill,” then that’s what the executor must do. (“Oh, and don’t forget to blow up that big house on the lake while you’re at it.”)

This may seem a thankless task, but no! The executor gets a small percentage of the estate for going to all the trouble - here in NY it’s 5% (which, on Bill’s, I mean Scrooge’s estate, would be a nice chunk of change!)

(Actually the Bill Gates example is completely inapropos - he has already set aside $15 billion for charity, and it is expected he will leave more. Warren Buffet too is expected to leave almost all of his wealth to charity. Nice, no?)

Now to your other point about the money reverting to the government. The Congress, as part of their “tax relief”, has, in their infinite wisdom decided to repeal the estate tax (which they slapped with the moniker, “death tax”), and Bush signed it into law. As of 2010, I believe, it will be gone no more federal estate tax. In 2011, it reappears, as the “tax relief” law has a sunset date, after which the old law springs back into place.

(By the way, Gates and Buffet are totally against this. They think it is wrong in America to have such vast accumulations of unearned wealth pass from generation to generation. Bill’s dad is an outspoken critic of the law.)

So, this means that if Bill conveniently died in 2010, the Federal government would get nothing, although the state estate tax (if applicable in the state) would kick in and take something. (Even with a will.)

But, and this is important, you can bet your bottom dollar that every duck in the pond would be lining up to prove some, any, relationship to Bill, I mean Scrooge. It doesn’t matter if you have to go back, then forward, as long as they’re related. Meaning - if Scrooge’s closest relationship is his great-grandmother’s great-granddaughter (obviously, descending through someone other than Scrooge), that’s good enough, and they will inherit. And with this much money at stake, you can bet that they would find someone.

I could be wrong, but I think this is why they always have a problem digging up dead people. (That and the fact that it’s illegal!) But seriously, for example, when they wanted to unearth, who was it - Billy the Kid?, they had to find his nearest living relative and ask permission. I believe that this could be because that person has inherited the property rights to his corpse. Yuck.

Since this is not exactly my field, feel free to snark on me at will!

6

Under what circumstances could someone demonstrate that the craziness of the wishes stipulated in McDuck’s will are evidence of incompetence, and that the will is thus invalid? It would seem to me that the larger the pile of gold at stake, the greater the possibility that this could happen.

7

Stuff like this makes me wonder … does the Salvation Army have a sniper division?

Watch your back, Bill …

8

:stuck_out_tongue:

9

In Dorothy L. Sayer’s short story The Stolen Stomach, a weathly man’s will directed that his entire alimentary canal be removed, secured at either end with a suitable ligature, and given intact to his medical student grand-nephew.

It later turns out that he had converted most of his fortune to a dozen large diamonds which he had swallowed prior to his death.

10

Good point; people (or ducks) would be coming out of the woodwork (or their nests) to contest the will. And the litigation would probably go on for years. I don’t remember what the fight about Howard Hughes’ will was all about, but it would be something on that scale.

The thing is, though, I don’t think they can take what you wrote in the will into consideration in considering whether the person lacked competence in the first place.

The level of competence that you have to exhibit to make a valid will is very low; it is even lower than that for a necessary to have a “meeting of the minds” to make a valid contract. I don’t remember what the standard is (sorry, I didn’t take Wills in law school), but rest assured, a crackpot, as long as there is no duress, fraud, could leave his assets to whoever he wanted. The standard is applied at the time of the execution (signing) of the will, so any post-mortem reading of the contents of the will doesn’t enter into it.

11

I bet I could scavenge a lot of bullion in twenty minutes.

12

What if the executor has trouble accomplishing the deceased wishes?

I once had someone bring two young, healthy dogs to me for euthanasia and cremation. The woman’s aunt died and she was named executrix. Auntie wanted her two dogs killed, cremated, and the ashes buried with her. The niece didn’t want to kill the dogs, but the will said she had to.

But what if other factors came to play? For instance, if either dog had bitten someone recently, than a quarantine for rabies observation would have made it impossible to kill the animal. Would burial of the deceased be delayed until the terms of her will could be met?

13

I’d think it could be evidence. If one were not Scrooge McDuck, for example, then a will that started out “I, JerH, being a giant duck, do hereby quack and quack this will and quack testament” might be considered evidence of some sort of mental incapacity.

14

Somewhat relevant is the story of the Barnes Foundation. Dr. Albert C. Barnes was a doctor who was born in 1872 and made a fortune after inventing an antiseptic. He had an art collection which included a nice collection of Impressionist paintings. His will stipulated that the collection be displayed intact in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Recently some of the trustees sought to overturn this provision so that the collection could be more widely seen. (If I’m misrepresenting something here, forgive me as this is my recollection of news articles about the collection.)

The point is that one could argue that the greater good is served by disregarding the stated objectives of a person’s will and doing something else with the estate. (I don’t know if that was the arguement made in the Barnes Foundation case, though.)

15

OK, JerH, you have to say “I JerH, being of sound mind, do hereby revoke all prior wills and codicils, and proclaim that this is my last will and testament.” Or something to that effect.

You can definitely attack the will on validity grounds (for example, if the will said what you said) but once you get past the mandatory legal language, anything goes. Quack all you want. Well, maybe not anything - someone else will have to post examples of invalid wills.

And somehow, I think that Scrooge “Bill” McDuck will be able to afford lawyers who will know how to write a valid will.

16

I think you can ask the Court to be relieved as executor if you could not carry out the provisions of the will. In NY, there is someone called the public administrator in each county who I think would come into play. The PA would hire a law firm to carry out the provisions of the will. And the attorneys, being the cruel heartless bastards that we are, would strangle the puppies with our bare hands. :stuck_out_tongue:

And burial and the will are two wholly separate things. The person goes into the ground quick; the reading and enforcement of the will can take quite a bit of time.

17

But there was a conflict in my case. The woman wanted to be buried with the ashes of her pets. In fact, I charged extra for a “rush cremation”. If the euthanasia/cremation could not occur in a timely manner and the will stipulated that she be buried with the ashes of her pet, would they have delayed burial? Dug her up at a later date?

18

Oops, good point. I was thinking in terms of Jewish burials. We get 'em in the ground right quick - within 24 hours if possible, and usually, within 48. The will reading would probably not take place that quickly. (Although it could.)

What, a Jewish lawyer? How could that be? :slight_smile:

However, to answer you slightly (this is only a shade more than a WAG), if the dogs had rabies, and something else legally had to be done with the dogs before being put down, I think that they would not delay the burial, and maybe buried the vases (ashes are put into vases, ain’t they?) with her later. I believe there are probably requirements (differing from state to state, of course) for getting someone into the ground within a certain time period. They wouldn’t have to “dig her up.”

Sorry, but you’re hitting me with hypotheticals (or in your case, real-life situations) that are just way out of my field. I don’t know!
:smack:

19

This point depends on the inheritance law of the jurisdiction where the individual was domiciled. What you’ve said is correct for the original English common law, and may well be the case in your jurisdiction. However, in 1925, the British Parliament passed a major property law reform act, and changed the common law rule for England and Wales. Now, there are limits to how far back you can go. If there are no heirs within the limits set by the Act, the estate escheats to the Crown. A lot of the other Commonwealth jurisdictions have followed that approach since then as well. (And, since Dorothy L. Sayers has already been mentioned, I point out that one of her full length novels turned on this very point. I think it was Unnatural Death.)

20

As **Northern Piper ** has pointed out, the deceased’s estate would be distributed according to the relevant legislation in that jurisdiction. In NSW, the *Wills, Probate and Administration Act * 1898 sets out detailed rules for the distribution of the estate of a person who dies intestate. Only reasonably close relatives have any statutory rights, with the basic order being:
(1) spouse alone (if no children);
(2) spouse and children;
(3) children alone (if no spouse);
(4) parents;
(5) brothers and sisters full-blood;
(6) brothers and sisters half-blood;
(7) grandparents;
(8) uncles and aunts full-blood;
(9) uncles and aunts half-blood

After that, the estate will belong to the Crown as bona vacantia. The Crown may, but does not have to, search out other, more distant relatives.