There’s a lot of discussion about his “will” in this thread, but as far as I understand it, the will is essentially irrelevant. As CoolHandCox mentioned above, his will just says that everything goes to his trust. That is pretty standard. That is how my will is set up; it’s a fairly simple document that just says that everything is “poured over” to my trust. The trust, not the will, determines how the estate is distributed. The will is just to ensure that any property that happens to be owned by me (rather than my trust) for whatever reason when I die also gets handled the way the trust specifies. Unless something went terribly wrong in Hackman’s estate planning, the vast majority of his estate (bank accounts, real estate, etc) will be owned by the trust, not by him.
Agreed.
To everyone else, you’re not crazy. I’ve read a lot of mainstream articles that effectively say we looked at the will and “the will left everything to the wife”. Seems pretty definitive. But it’s 100% wrong.
I’d guess what is happening is the will language is confusing/legalese. The Will basically says "I leave it all to WIFE (as trustee of the Hackman Trust). It kinda sounds like the will is leaving it to the wife, but it’s not. That means it’s all going just to the trust and that’s just a way to say it. Wife just happens to be the named trustee when the will was written (could have been a bank, or lawyer, or friend). But trustees do no benefit/get any money. They just make sure the trust money gets to the named trust beneficiaries who are unknown at this point.
I posted this article in the other thread. I think it has some decent info:
NewsNation: Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa’s $80M estate: Who will inherit it?
Interesting, but the article is deliberately confusing…
The surviving attorney is in charge of the trust, since the wife is dead.
Unclear what the “mission” of the trust is, and so who benefits… charities?
Unclear whether there’s any time-of-death clauses. Presumably that 90 days mentioned elsewhere?
Says that Hackman’s children will inherit, then says they would have to invalidate the will to do so. The will is around 20 years old so hard to argue Alzheimers was a factor.
That article is not bad and helpful for a few paragraphs:
Hackman and Arakawa both signed their wills in June 2005, assigning each other as the personal representatives of the Gene Hackman Living Trust, which is now worth $80 million.
“It’s very common that (Betsy’s) pour-over will leave everything to a trust. And, in fact, her pour-over will leave everything to the Gene Hackman (Living Trust), and his pour-over will leave everything to her as a trustee [of his trust],” David A. Esquibias, a trust and family law attorney…
So they both had wills that left everything to a trust. Got it.
Then, starting here, it’s confusing:
Entertainment Weekly reported that Hackman’s three adult children — Christopher, 65, Elizabeth, 62 and Leslie, 58 — have not been named as beneficiaries to Hackman’s estate in his $80 million will.
In my mind, which is far from perfect, heirs inherit from a will (or if there’s no will) in probate land. Not beneficiaries. Beneficiaries is the word for outside probate/wills stuff…like a trust. Maybe that’s not so simple, regardless, we know the trust was the sole “heir” of the will and is getting all the money. I think that’s settled. So it doesn’t matter if the kids weren’t named as heirs who would inherit in the will.
Also, clicking that EW link leads to an article I can’t make sense of either.
I think we’re just back to will left everything to a trust, and we don’t know much more than that. At this point, I’ll bow out and let things happen.
“Pour-over will”? What’s that?
A pour-over will is a legal document that ensures an individual’s remaining assets will automatically transfer to a previously established trust upon their death.
American inheritance law is weird. What’s a trust?
Thanks. That’s a new one to me.
markn_1Guest post above goes over this for more context.
What’s a trust? A trust is when one person gives their stuff (like money) to someone else (trustee) to take care of it for another person (beneficiary). For example, if you want to make sure your money is saved for your child when they grow up, you put it in a trust, and the trustee looks after it until your child/beneficiary is old enough to use it.
There are endless variations and the person giving money can also be the trustee and beneficiary. It removes you from owning the money but allows you to use the money. It’s also helpful with taxes and privacy, and after you die.
Googling, trusts exist in Israeli law at least since January 2006.
A trust is a legal entity that is set up to be the owner of certain property. For example, I don’t own my house or my bank accounts, my trust owns them. But I’m the trustee of the trust, so I have complete control over that property. So far, it sounds pointless, but the advantages come into play when I die. If I owned the property myself, there would be no owner when I die, and a probate process would determine who gets the now-unowned property. But since it’s owned by a trust, and the trust continues to exist after I die, distribution of assets is a simpler process. The successor trustee (of which I have three listed) follows the terms of the trust, which specify who should get what.
My wife and I have a similar trust setup. If I die first, everything goes to her. If she dies first, everything goes to me. When both us are dead, everything goes to the trust. And, this is important, our children are not heirs in our wills, but they are beneficiaries in our trust.
There are legal and tax benefits for us to set things up this way, which our lawyer and tax adviser can explain a lot better than I can, but if you wanted to say something scandalous about Mr. and Mrs. Kent Clark, you could truthfully say that we didn’t leave our children anything in our wills.
And our children know this, because we have given each of them copies of all the documents so there’s no miscommunication.
I think you nailed it. Misleading to create scandal. It’s working on me - I clicked and read and linked and shared the article. Damn it.
To go along with what I quoted, is the subtitle and first sentence in the EW article that it’s based on:
Hackman left the entirety of his estate to his wife…The succession of the considerable estate of Gene Hackman is now in question after the discovery that his three adult children are not named as beneficiaries to his estate in his will.
That’s wrong, and now drawing a scandalous conclusion that cannot be drawn at this point.
Anyways.
If there is a trust that covers both he and his wife, and that was all done right by a lawyer, I reckon the only thing the hired high-price lawyer can do is challenge the “of sound mind” kind of language and that’s tantamount to suing/challenging the competency of the lawyer who did the will.
The high-priced lawyer likely already got a million and would tell the son, “sure, give me 10 mill more and if “we” win, you get the rest,” and if had any integrity he’d be upfront and say, “Dude, ain’t gonna happen” and drive off in his new Ferrari.
I think hiring an estate lawyer regarding an $80m dollar estate is completely reasonable. It would be unreasonable not to. Even if the son is a named beneficiary.
Like, if a lay person were to go to the moon and it was reported they hired a former NASA astronaut to consultant them, that would be completely normal and it would be odd to just wing it.
I’m not being critical of anyone in this thread, but I do wonder why we seem so interested in the distribution of this particular dead person’s assets. Tons of rich and/or famous people die, but I don’t recall any similar discussion of who gets the inheritance. Sure, most of the time there’s no mystery. But this guy apparently had good lawyers who set everything up properly. While the public doesn’t know,(and perhaps will never know) who gets what, I’m not sure why we care.
I think it can be interesting in how it all works. And how it can be miscommunicated in the media. This particular scenario has a lot of interesting (for probate) aspects.
But your bigger point is not lost on me and I’m for real bowing out now.
No you don’t. While a will can specify another type of trust an estate goes to (which is expensive and has other issues), most trusts are “living trusts” created while the person is alive.
As much property as possible is assigned to the trust when it is created (and updated as property comes and goes). It is far simpler and cheaper. As noted, the trust doesn’t die when the creator dies. So it continues to exist and it’s assets are distributed per the trust’s specifications. This avoids probate for these assets which is a really big advantage.
Anything not already in the trust when the person dies is part of their estate (but see below). It goes thru probate. Even if something is stated to go to a trust, it still goes thru probate and all that. As noted, post-death moving assets to a (non-living) trust is a whole other thing.
You can have millions of dollars in a living trust with the remainder estate being valued at maybe a few thousand dollars. Many states allow such small estates to go thru a simple and fast process. Some heirs can do the paperwork themselves. Saves legal fees.
(Note, a lot of other things can also avoid probate and shouldn’t/can’t be put into a trust. E.g., many financial accounts can be assigned to beneficiaries upon the owner’s death. You definitely want to do that with IRA accounts and such. We have primary and secondary beneficiaries set up which lessens the chance of the accounts reverting to the estate as long as those are kept up to date.)
Different kind of trust, I think - the kind you invest in, like an REIT.
Israeli inheritance law is, I think, a bit simpler and more straightforward than in the U.S., with no inheritance tax and a much more streamlined probate process. Financial instruments like the trusts being discussed here, if they exist, aren’t really common.
Anyway, sorry for the hijack.