I’ve always found the story of “whatever happened to [famous person’s] estate” interesing in a schadenfreudische sort of way. A few of my favorites:
-Mark Twain’s literary estate generated about $2 million before his copyrights expired. The monies were placed into a fund, the interest from which provided a comfortable income for his daughter and her husbands. Upon the suicide of Nina Clemens (nee Nina Gabrilowitsch), his only grandchild and last descendant, the money and the few unexpired copyrights were inherited by the Samoussouds, her stepfather’s family; they were White Russian emigres, several of whom had never heard of Mark Twain when they were suddenly blessed with a major windfall courtesy of him.
-Dorothy Parker was supported for the last few years of her life by the incredibly wealthy and quite horrid Lillian Hellman with the verbal agreement that she would will Hellman her copyrights when she died. Instead, she willed them to Martin Luther King, Jr.; Hellman was beyond furious but decided not to pursue it legally because the value of the estate was negligible and the PR of suing MLK would have been quite bad.
-Buddy Holly’s young widow, who was pregnant with their only child at the time of his fatal plane trip, suffered a miscarriage a few weeks after his death. She eventually remarried and had three children who were well provided for from his royalties (not that I think Buddy would have had any problem with that).
-Marilyn Monroe, whose estate was not nearly as much as you’d expect, bequeathed her assets to drama guru Lee Strasberg. His younger sons, born very late in his life (he was in his late-sixties/early seventies when they were born) inherited a fortune from her imaging rights alone.
-Big Four railroad magnate Mark Hopkins , a notoriously stingy man who lived in one of the ugliest homes in San Francisco even after becoming what would by our standards be a multi-billionaire, finally succombed to the nagging of his much younger wife (and cousin) Mary and built a particularly garish mansion on Nob Hill. As if to express his disapproval, he died before it was completed.
His wife spent her remaining years decorating it, fell in love with the much younger decorator, Edward T. Searles, married him, and bequeathed her enormous estate to Searles (having disinherited her husband’s adopted son). Searles remarried and the fortune passed to his children from the second marriage, making his kids the beneficiaries of their fathers first wife’s first husband’s estate. (The mansion was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel now occupies its site.
His business partner Leland Stanford had an adored only son born late in his parents’ marriage (as an infant he placed him on a bed of lettuce and introduced him to friends under a sterling silver serving dish) who was sole heir to his father’s $100 million fortune (this in an age when skilled workmen earned $20/wk.). The son died young of natural causes and the father established Stanford University in his memory. Third partner Collis Huntington, also notoriously stingy in life, split his fortune between his much younger wife, Arabella, and his favorite nephew, Henry; Henry and Arabella put the fortune back together by marrying and spent the rest of their lives building museums, college buildings, and living in luxury. (Fourth BIG 4 member, Charles Crocker, left his fortune to his kids and grandkids, but that’s not nearly as interesting.)
Liberace’s estate (and the proceeds from his museum ) is used to endow music scholarships. Pretty woman Irene Ryan donated most of her fortune to form a scholarship fund for actors that still benefits several applicants each year.
Orson Welles bequeathed most of his estate to his beautiful mistress, Oja Kodar, who was promptly sued by his estranged but not divorced wife, Countess Paola Mori. Mori won but was killed in a car crash the same week.
What are some interesting financial meanderings that you know of?