Kind of a Monty Hall deal? Open the box and take what you get, or take a chance and burn it to open curtain #2?
More like “Congratulations, you’ve arrived at either the beginning or the end of a Lovecraftian horror story. What you do with the Sealed Evil in a Can determines which it is.”
As I have said many times and to anyone who will listen; upon my death my heirs are bound to reclaim my corpse from whoever killed me and bring it back to my homeland. my corpse and my weapons and armor shall be placed upon a ship, then that ship shall be set aflame and pushed into the sea. Everyone at the funeral shall take part in a mêlée and the winner shall claim all my treasure.
I have a friend who swears I will be mentioned in her will.
She swears the mention will be “Hi Rick”
There was a wealthy man in Spain a couple of years ago who left half his fortune (€30 million) to charity and the other half to Prince Felipe. Who he had never met and who hadn’t a clue who he was. Nothing to his own family or friends, but hey, the heir to a $1.7 billion throne needs more money. I think the inheritance was investigated and found to be legitimate, at which point Felipe did the decent thing and donated it all, but very odd.
I think it was every woman within a certain area, with the time starting shortly after his death and stopping however-many years later.
I don’t agree. I don’t believe anyone should be coerced, and it sounds like the lawyer you mentioned may have influenced the man, but otherwise, it’s his money and he gets to choose.
If I want to leave 10% to the family and 90% to charities and my dog, it’s my decision because it was my money.
Unless the executor is going to follow you around and make sure it gets done, I don’t think there is any legal requirement you do as your dead relative says. Especially when it sounds like dead relative is sticking you with the tax liability.
On the other hand, if you think the executor (or the family) is going to be a huge dick about it, just leave that amount of money to the church in *your *will. After all, dead relative didn’t say *when *you had to pass along the money, right?
Couldn’t this guy just borrow against his inheritance, if he needed the money badly?
Who would make him a loan with those terms? If he doesn’t live to 90 he doesn’t ever inherit the money and the bank now has a dead client without sufficient assets to pay back the loan. Risky.
I was going to mention having to spend a night in a haunted house, but I’m told it’s a standard clause.
I know of an odd one. About 15 years ago I was chatting with a guy who owned a pizza parlor over in the Southwest area of Fort Worth, and he happened to mention that he was a student at TCU. Now, this guy was mid-60s if he was a day, so I told him that it was awfully cool that he was going “back to school” and he explained that he had never left school. Ever.
Apparently, he had a very wealthy great-aunt, and 50 years before, she had bequeathed to him an annual stipend (which was quite generous, $20,000 or so) in addition to all tuition, books, and room & board, paid by the estate, until he finished college. No limit was placed on how long he could take to finish his degree, as long as he carried a full course load.
Well, the wording of the bequest was such that it made more sense for him to NOT graduate, because he liked having the extra money. So over the 40+ years that he had been a full-time student (!!!) he’d accumulated enough credits to graduate with nearly every degree that TCU offered! He mentioned that he was particularly interested in history and literature, but he’d studied computer science, accounting, marketing, business, and music over the years also.
Apparently his great-aunt’s estate had long been distributed (everything but the neverending college bequest for her great-nephew) and was to be liquidated and the rest donated to a church organization when he was finally done with school. Or dead.
What about these cases where a rich eccentric leaves an estate to dogs, cats, other pets? usually, the remainder goes to somebody when the last dog/cat/gerbil/whatever passes on-there must be some incentive to “hurry things up”.
Not knowing your friend, I won’t say that that story is untrue, but it’s remarkably similar to that of the main character from a Roger Zelazny novel.
Why the :dubious: ? the lawyer was working for the university, and someone asked for help in making a donation to the university. It’s the lawyer’s job to be helpful and assist.
I’m not a lawyer but when I was writing my will I remember the attorney explaining that this kind of clause is not valid. It was something like the person can’t demand what people do with the objects/money/etc. because once the item is given then it’s not under the control of the estate any longer. There’s some legal term for this that I can’t remember.