Who are you talking about here? Is there any evidence that Helmsley’s grandchildren have not made it on their own?
Paris Hilton has not received any large inheritance that I am aware of. Being a trust-fund baby is hardly comparable. And in her own bizarre way, she’s earned more money herself than the vast majority of women her age.
Why not? Would you ban all lotteries, contests and gambling, too? What about bequests to non-family members, as in Helmsley’s chauffeur?
Me either. Maybe you and I should spend more time sucking up to old rich broads.
There’s nothing even slightly bitchy about anything in her will.
Bitchy would have been physically burning all her assets so that nobody would get them.
Not giving an inheritance to the grandkids is probably the best thing that ever happened to them.
I once told a casual acquaintance that I was leaving all my assets to charity instead of my family, and he said, “That’s incredibly selfish.” I guess he didn’t hear the charity part.
It would be interesting if your boyfriend/husband/significant other donated money to charity in lieu of buying you flowers on your birthday. But got a nice bouquet for his secretary.
Or if your employer gave year-end bonuses to every employee except you and donated your bonus to charity.
Your boyfriend or husband is completely different than your grandmother who you may very well have little to no contact with in this life. Plus, I’d actually think it was sweet if he donated money to charity in my name for my birthday; flowers die in a day or two, but that money could help someone else. Oh, and so long as know he wasn’t schtooping the secretary, I don’t care if he got her flowers for her birthday or Secretary Day (or whatever we call it now).
And your employer scenario is also not right. Maybe if my employer gave half of the people bonuses and donated the other half to charity, then that would make sense. But you know what? A bonus is just that- a bonus. You aren’t entitled to it, so when you don’t get it, you probably shouldn’t complain- it’s tacky to whine about what you think you’re entitled to.
And people are not entitled to the wealth of their rich grandparents. Unless you know WHY she cut two grandchildren from the will, we are really not in a position to judge. There are bitchy reasons to cut someone from a will. And Ms. Helmsley was certainly capable of bitchy behavior. But I haven’t seen anyone give a reason for why this was bitchy other than the implication that adults should be entitled to the wealth of their rich grandparents.
Say what you will, IMO a rich broad who leaves more money to her dog than any surviving family is a bitch. The news that she gave a healthy chunk to her brother makes her a little less of a bitch – but that info wasn’t available to me when I wrote the OP.
Really, it would not have been bitchy had she given ALL her money to charity. But what she did amounted to a slap in the face from beyond the grave.
That may be, but bluethree seemed to be saying that giving money to charity in lieu of giving to a family member is 100% non-bitchy.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but most women would be pretty annoyed if their husband’s secretary got flowers and they didn’t. They would correctly perceive that their guy is being a jerk.
Maybe you shouldn’t, but it doesn’t change the fact that the employer is being lame if it does something like that.
Thank you, diosabellisima, for your answer, which is essentially the same as mine.
brazil84, These are pretty bad analogies.
Let’s start with the first one. My imaginary husband’s vows to me and the government’s decree that his assets are my assets are a great deal different from an adult’s relationship to his grandmother. And still, he has the right to buy his secretary flowers. Why he’d do it on my birthday is a wonder, but maybe it’s his (the secretary’s) birthday, too.
My relationship with my employer is also completely different from an adult’s relationship with his grandmother. Is the year-end bonus supposed to be a chunk of profits divided up evenly between the employees? Maybe it’s divided up according to which employees contributed the most. If the former, it would indeed be shitty for my employer to donate my share to charity. If the latter, and I hadn’t seen my employer for years, then it would be just fine.
I know a lot of people want to make their descendants rich when they die, and know that a great deal more people want to become rich when their forbears die, but I don’t buy into any of that. I hope my parents spend every cent, are “toss their last quarter out of the coffin.”
I’m going to start a thread in IMHO about how many people think they have a relative who’s going to die and make them rich, because I suspect a whole lot of people have this unfounded belief.
And you’re right, I do feel that leaving money to charity instead of to independent adult family members is 100% non-bitchy.
Maybe there’s a legal maneuver around that, like not actually bequeathing ownership of the money, but rather arranging a trust that pays out an annuity to the heir over ten or twenty years. Presumably it would be easy to verify compliance on the part of the heir, by having one of the lawyers accompany the heirs to the grave…god, how sordid!
Anyone know the story of why the other two grandkids were cut out?
Why? She doesn’t owe anything to her kin. While it is common to leave money to your family, there’s nothing requiring you to do so, and in many cases I can see good reasons not to do so.
As for the dog, heck, it sounds like it was the best relationship she had in her life after her husband died. Why should I complain? She did her good by mankind by leaving most of her money to charity.
Maybe her relatives were assholes? I dunno, and neither do you. I’m sure she had issues, but that doesn’t make her a bitch.
A billionaire who leaves the vast bulk of her money to charity and little to her family is certainly out of the ordinary, but she may have simply felt that it was the best use of her money. She probably was hell on wheels, and she was likely a bitch in life, but I don’t see how her will confirms that.
If that were all she had done, I doubt anyone would have a serious problem.
My problems are that she treated her granchildren unequally and that she left more for the care of her dog than she left to the grandchildren who did receive a bequest.
Those types of gifts make a statement about how the giver values the people involved. Maybe it’s a true statement, and maybe it’s a statement that one has a right to make, but it’s a rude statement nonetheless.