Your Last Will and Testament is your opportunity to decide how your estate assets will be distributed when you are gone and determine who will be in charge of overseeing the probate of your estate. Many people consider it their last opportunity to make a statement – and sometimes those statements are unusual, to say the least. Although some may be difficult to believe, people actually included the following provisions in their Will.
The Truly Strange
Portuguese aristocrat Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara left his considerable fortune to 70 strangers randomly chosen out of a Lisbon phone directory. “I thought it was some kind of cruel joke,” a 70-year-old heiress told Portugal’s Sol newspaper. “I’d never heard of the man.”
Jeremy Bentham, an 18th-and-19th-century social philosopher, left a particularly strange bequest in his Will — his preserved, clothed body. His 1832, his clothed skeleton topped with a wax model of his head has been preserved in a wood-and-glass cabinet known as the Auto-Icon. It now resides at University College London and is occasionally moved so Bentham can “attend” meetings. Even stranger, Bentham wanted his actual head to be included. In fact, he reportedly carried around the glass eyes he wanted to be used in his preserved face for years before his death. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the preservation process distorted his face, so the wax replica was required.
The Comedian
Roger Brown, of Great Britain, lost his life to prostate cancer in 2013, leaving behind a secret bequest of £3,500 to seven of his closest friends, with the proviso that they use it for a boozy weekend away to a European city. “We would like to formally apologise to Roger’s two sons, Sam and Jack, for taking away some of their inheritance,” beneficiary Roger Rees told the South Wales Evening Post after the friends spent a weekend in Berlin. “We spent most of it on beer, the rest we wasted.”
When the famous author Robert Louis Stevenson died, he left his friend Annie H. Ide his birthday. Ide had previously complained to Stevenson about the inconvenience of being born on Christmas, so the writer left her November 13th as a new birthday provided she take care of it with “moderation and humanity… the said birthday not being so young as it once was.”
It’s A Dog’s Life After All
In 2004, billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley changed an earlier Will that left her $4 billion fortune to the poor, including a provision directing the money to be spent caring for dogs. Her nine-year-old Maltese, Trouble, also received $12 million in the Will, completely cutting out her grandchildren or requiring them to visit their father’s grave annually in order to inherit their share. Trouble’s bequest was later reduced to a mere $2 million.
When Carlotta Liebenstein, a German countess, died in 1991, she left her entire $80-million estate to her dog, Gunther.
The Last Word
Michigan millionaire Wellington Burt was clearly a bitter man when he died in 1919. His will specified that his vast fortune would not be passed on until 21 years after the death of his last surviving grandchild. She died in 1989 and the 21-year countdown ended on November 2010. About 12 people discovered they were beneficiaries of the strange Will, described as a “legacy of bitterness,” and shared his $110 million fortune.
German poet Heinrich “Henry” Heine left his estate to his wife, Matilda, in 1856 on the condition that she remarry, so that “there will be at least one man to regret my death”.
The Romantic
Comedian Jack Benny included a truly romantic provision in his Will when he died in 1974. “Every day since Jack has gone the florist has delivered one long-stemmed red rose to my home,” his widow Mary Livingstone wrote in a magazine, shortly after his death. “I learned Jack actually had included a provision for the flowers in his Will. One red rose to be delivered to me every day for the rest of my life.”
Contact Oklahoma Estate Planning Attorneys
For additional information, please join us for an upcoming FREE seminar. If you have questions or concerns regarding your own Last Will and Testament, contact the experienced Oklahoma estate planning attorneys at Parman & Easterday by calling 405-843-6100 to schedule your appointment today.
Since founding Parman & Easterday in 1985, Larry has led over 1,000 free, community-service education programs and helped more than 10,000 Oklahoma families go from putting off their estate plan to getting it done. His goal for every client is the same: to become the person their family calls "the one who took care of everything."
Larry is the author of three books: The Straight Shooter's Guide to Estate Planning; Estate Planning Basics; and Guiding Those Left Behind in Oklahoma. He served as Oklahoma's Secretary of State and Secretary of Commerce, and his firm is the only member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys in the state.
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