Just in terms of following through on my request to move the legal issues to FQ (not IMHO as I read enough posters who either were lawyers or play one on TV) to bring it here.
As I understand the facts:
He was 95 and had Alzheimers
His wife caught something like Hantavirus and could not receive treatment in time. It would seem (as per coroner) that she preceded his death by some days. She had expressed (to someone - not a lawyer and not documented as such) to give all or most to charity. Therein:
At least one son has hired an Estate Lawyer. Hackman apparently didn’t equally like his children and had not named any of them in his will - not too unlikely as his wife was in her 60’s
So, who gets the money? (ETA: $85 million) (Besides the estate lawyers?)
I would imagine no. Wouldn’t that be very unusual anyway?
My main reason was Celebrity Death’s usually do not devolve into wills and Estate Lawyer issues. If we had to wait till it goes to court it would have to be the longest, most bummer, Cafe Society thread ever. Fine if it stays there. I’m not forced to read it.
You’d have to see the wills and the trust documents - apparently, his will left everything to a trust for which his wife was named a personal representative . I’ve seen reports that she left everything to him in the same way but nothing that says who the beneficiaries of the trusts are. I’ve read that one reason to use trusts is for privacy since wills often become public.
Very generally, wills apply to stuff that needs to be probated. Probate stuff is public record. So, if they have started the proceedings, it in theory could be public. Or it could have been leaked by someone.
Stuff that does not need to be probated, say a life insurance policy, trusts, etc, does not go through probate court and is not public record. Many rich people setup their assets to avoid probate (partly because it’s public). When you hear the word heir, think will/probate. When you hear beneficiary, that’s generally not probate. (This might not hold up everywhere to be honest, if not hopefully someone will correct me).
Without knowing more than some basics about a will, you can’t really answer this question. Not me at least, maybe a probate lawyer can provide more info.
Adding: I’ll leave my post as is, but doreen’s helps fill in gaps about public vs private, and probate vs non-probate.
Okay, at least those are the facts regarding probate / wills / estate.
The rest is basically gossip about spoken intentions and how to fairly divide a kingdom. I only wish it didn’t have to continue on Cafe Society, but that’s the forum for gossip.
When I hear, “it left everything to his wife” - I’m sure it did, but any decent Will would also have alternatives, and alternatives to the alternatives. There’s also language about what to do when your named heir dies close in time to you, but you’d need to read the language for both of them.
Here, I would guess, there are alternatives but did the wife legally predecease him or not. That’s for the lawyers, and until it’s sorted, for gossip.
Shouldn’t the estate documents have allowed for the possibility of both dying simulaneously (or in close proximity, even)? Were secondary beneficiaries named?
It would be the wills that might have made provisions for deaths occurring close together, which would determine whose trust the money went to. The trust documents ( which wont be public) would name any successor beneficiaries.
I looked up the case. It’s in the Sante Fe District Court. It’s case number: D-101-PB-202500059. The wife’s Arakawa is there too under a different case no. Both opened March 6, 2025.
The documents are not available online, but you can see what is being filed. The Estate Rep (Executor, Personal Representative) is an attorney. She was named in the Will and the third choice after wife and another now deceased attorney. The Estate Rep job is to make sure the will is carried out as written.
Everything was left to the Gene Hackman Living Trust. As noted above, no idea who the beneficiaries of that trust were. So the Estate Rep will make sure any money goes to that trust (most may already be there). So the line “kids not named in will” doesn’t really mean anything or help here. The trust got all the money and we don’t know who benefits from the trust. It also doesn’t matter who died first since the trust did not die and the trust was the sole “heir” of the will. I think.
Can we infer the beneficiaries? - You’ll need someone smarter than me to see if this is true, but if wife was the trustee (manager) of the trust, I don’t think she could also be the only beneficiary, there would need to be at least be another person/organization, etc. Or rather, you can’t be the sole beneficiary and the trustee of a trust. I think.
I’m using this MSN article to fill in blanks. It says it has the will and is quoting the will, and the names check out to who is filing/estate rep in the court case, so I tend to trust it.
She could theoretically be the only beneficiary of the trust. Nothing in the law prohibits it but it would probably be pointless to do so. The MSN article makes me think this is a bog standard estate planning trust. With both of them dead, the money should go where Hackman and Arakawa intended. Maybe to Hackman’s kids. Maybe to charities. Maybe elsewhere.
A post I saw on Instragram (for what its worth) said they left everything to each other and Gene’s will had the “if she dies within 90 days of when I die she is presumed to have survived me” clause.
Also written allegedly quite a while ago, so presumably not open to challenegs about his mental capabilities.
First, it depends on the wording, and second, 90 seems like a lot - typically these clauses are - IIRC from getting my will done - 24hr, 72hr, or 1 week. I guess then it comes down to whether he survived more than a week. Usually these clauses are for things like a car or plane crash, so there’s no nitpicking over who was last to die, or one survived an extra few hours in hospital.
Actually, the clause we are talking about was in the wife’s will and says “no person will be deemed to have survived me.” if the death occurred within 90 days.
It can be any amount the people want - a lot of times it’s for what you say, plane or car crashes where you can’t always tell who survived who. But sometimes, especially when one person has children with someone else, there’s a different time involved. For example, maybe I want to leave money to my husband but if he dies two months after me, I want it to go to my nieces rather than to his kids, who will inherit everything from him if I die first.
I’d say from my experience a couple of decades ago, 90 days is very typical. You wouldn’t want it to be years because the trust is effectively tied up for that period waiting to see whether the other person dies such that it becomes a simultaneous death. But you also don’t want it to be too short because there are estate planning benefits to it being a simultaneous death. Somewhere between 30 and 90 days seems to be the compromise most people reach and I think 90 days was the most common I saw.
But it seems to be established that his wife died first, so the important question is what Hackman’s will says about survival times?
What’s the default situation where a person is named in a will as a beneficiary but dies first? (Absent explicit instructions) Would it go instead to her immediate heirs or his?
I guess the other question is the circmstances of the trust. Presumably a trust has instructions who is next in line as manager? Would the trust have been set up beforehand, or likely be part of the will instructions to set it up? Can you set up a trust with a dead person as the beneficiary? Seems illogical.
I suppose dealing with all this stuff explains why lawyers can afford nice things.
In many states, I think the share going to a deceased beneficiary would then default to the beneficiary’s estate to be distributed per those instructions.
Hackman’s Will left everything to a Trust. The will did not leave anything to a person, not even his wife - this has been seen and quoted in articles. Why would it matter who dies first? So Hackman dies and the money flows to the trust because that’s what his will says should happen. Easy peasy (if this is wrong, let me know).
Now who benefits from the trust (ie, who is a beneficiary and gets the money)? We don’t know, because it’s private and never needs to be public. But the trust would list the beneficiaries and the trustee would ensure they get the money. If all/some are people and are dead, then it/part of it goes to the alternative named beneficiaries. I’m saying beneficiaries because the Trustee/Personal rep did say recently in court filings “beneficiaries” have been notified. So more than one. Or, the wife was not a sole beneficiary of Hackman’s trust. (see quote below)
Peters [Trustee/Estate Rep] noted in a March 13 petition to the court that “there are trust assets to be administered in both the GeBe Revocable Trust and the Gene Hackman Living Trust,” and that the GeBe trust "passes through the Will of Gene Hackman to the Gene Hackman Living Trust…The latter “contains mainly out-of-state beneficiaries,” per her court filing "
**I’m going for clarity. There were two trusts, but I’m just saying one (and lots of the money was probably already in the trust before he died); also, you can usually coincidentally get to the same place of who ultimately gets the money but I think it helps to correctly track the flow of assets. You easily spot when articles are butchering it.
Speaking in generalities, it’s going to depend on how the will is written and when the will was written. If the will specifies what to do , then that’s what will happen.
But if there isn’t any mention, then what happens depends on the jurisdiction - if there is an anti-lapse statute, then what the person would have inherited goes to their heirs , assuming they were covered by the anti-lapse statue. In my state, it only covers siblings and descendants, so if a bequest was left to a niece or a friend, the bequest gets ignored and the same goes if there is no anti-lapse law. And of course, those laws might depend on the date the will was written.