Lawyers Share Craziest "Legal" Last Will and Testament Stories They had to deal with (r/AskReddit)

lawyers of Reddit what are the craziest yet legal last will and testament stories you had to deal with I worked at an attorney office and little older lady gave her house and her belongings to a bus driver the bus driver was nice to her and would helped her we were awaiting for hell to break loose when her family found out two sons of really wealthy coupled go to the family lawyer to have the will read lawyer is super nervous he has known them both since they were kids one son gets the entire inheritance and the other gets nothing the explanation was that it should be passed through two blood relatives only so that was the day he found out he was adopted edit a lot of people asked what happened I only heard of this through a friend so I don't have a full story but the reason it went to lawyer the person I know was that it was being contested so the disinherited son had to contest I believe over the amount not that his brother wasn't willing to give him anything crazy why even adopt a kid if they don't mean to treat them as their own in the end I don't understand some people the great stork Derby was when a wealthy Canadian left a substantial amount of money to whichever woman had the most children in the ten years following his death it was upheld through a numerous court battles in four women tied with nine children each two women were also given smaller payouts one had ten children two were stillborn and another had more than nine kids but a few were illegitimate the guy also had some other interesting things in his will and was a known practical joker military lawyer here had a young client come in for a will before deployment he put a request to be buried in blue jeans a Chris Jericho t-shirt and his replica WWE Championship belt happily this airman didn't meet any misfortune on his deployment up as he changed the will no idea that was 15 years ago not a lawyer but paralegal we had a dying client in hospital change Fogel by recording it on a smartphone it set a precedent and made the local paper the lawyer in question has the page from the newspaper framed in his office where I went to college there's an oak tree that was deeded to itself in a man's well now call the tree that owns itself it sits in the middle of a rodent you have to go to one lane to drive around it story is that a man loved the tree so much as a kid that around the time he died in the 1830s he gave the tree possession of itself this technically wouldn't stand up in a court of law but the county and local populace has accepted it and takes care of it the original tree actually died and the current one is a product of one of the a cons of the original wikipedia.org tree that owns itself I work for a lawyer who does wells we've had a lady put in her will that one of her adult sons was not to receive his share until he visited a dentist and the other son lost 70 pounds another lady put in her will that she wanted her cats cremated with her when she died told her that's not going to happen human remains and animal remains do not get cremated at once so she settled on cremated separately and joined together then buried together typically wills are about 10 pages for the average person we had a lady who had a 56 page will she detailed everything from her house to people wooden ladle to toilet paper holder to magazine basket to etcetera for every single item in this lady's house we had a man put in his will that his family was to go to the zoo immediately after his burial that day we thought that was more heartwarming we had a lady that told us to put in her will that she wanted to be buried on her property next to her husband she lived on a small rural property totally illegal to have human remains buried there refused to tell us whether her husband was cremated or not and had dictated that she did not want to be cremated edit her husband had died five or six years prior so it's not as though it was 50 years where things like that may have been a little over law we work with many people from a certain religion a lot of people we do wills for leave at least 90% of their estates to the church instead of their families not a lawyer but I had an experience with this years ago rich uncle of mine real crazy not in the good way he would come to visit us when we were kids maybe once every 10 years last time he did he brought us to Denny's he met my brother in an airport was there for an hour before he got on another plane and went home when he died he had no friends he had driven his wife to basically drink herself to death a few years prior he left his entire estate to an Elvis impersonator everything my dad is a lawyer and a friend of my grandpa who was in his 80s and had end-stage cancer made his will he was a big fan of weapons and wanted to give them to my dad he's a fan too he left him two shotguns a Glock and a revolver my dad told him it would be better to write it in the will because my country's law says you can only on five weapons at a time my dad had already four at the time so he would have to give some up but if you inherit them it doesn't add to the limit so they made a Testament and he gave him the weapons except for the revolver because it was his favorite and didn't want to give it away yet might add instantly knew why but didn't say anything two weeks later the guy shot himself with the revolver he still hasn't got the revolver because police still has it he never told my grandpa that he knew but he didn't want to take this guy's chance of ending his life on his own terms instead if waiting for the cancer to win there's a famous UK case one of the richest men in the world at the time died during the journey between his solicitor and his country estate all because he forgot his glasses took lawyers just over 100 years to spend the entire estate in legal fees the name of the case escapes me I think you are thinking of William Jennings he died in 1798 and the lawsuit over his will ended in 1915 not the lawyer but worked in the wills and trusts part of a financial firm conditional trust / wills about the trustee having to be clean and sober to receive their money were pretty normal but the weirdest one I saw was a guy who wanted to set up a trust that said his daughter could only receive a monthly payment from the trust he'd set up if she remained below a certain quite low weight he was setting it up while still alive but it was a perpetual trust so that rule would stay in place after he died I can't imagine having such a controlling parent that they feel the need to dictate how much I weigh from beyond the grave Estate Lawyer here I could tell so many stories sisters fighting over deceased brothers dining room table ending in an accusation that one had murdered her own husband true believers who were convinced the rapture was imminent and only saw the value of completing their estate plan when I explained the mess those of us left behind would have to deal with including their staff a guy who got married days before his death to a longtime girlfriend long story did a will disinherited several kids but not all and somehow everything worked out okay with minimal disagreement several stories where a family member is a lawyer who practices in another area of law in another state or doesn't practice at all guaranteed craziness I could go on and on it's the absolute best line of work super fulfilling great stories get to know families and walk meaningful paths alongside them this large French farmers family had been fighting each other for 15 years over their parents estate everything and anything had been a weapon in this all-out war debts spoils barns plots cows wills and whatever defeats followed victories failures followed compromises but progress was being made and at some point the killing zone turned to a standstill everything was agreed as long as no one talked antics jewelry furnitures kitchenware photographs laundry or tools a long protracted period ensued any goodwill tentative harshly discouraged before even being aired time went on with no issue in sight then someone suggested they just drag all the stuff into the Farms courtyard pour petrol on it and set it on the fire everyone agreed I was a witness to one where the lady wanted to make sure her daughter divorced her husband when she had no intentions of doing so if she wanted her part of the estate thankfully that is not legally enforceable so nothing came from it I mean it's not that crazy it's depressingly predictable rich old aunt the only one in her huge family with any money having been a doctor on the Upper East Side of Manhattan she set up a living trust to take care of her poor relations in the Philippines to continue as a death trust whenever she died her favorite niece was in control of the trust and of course the niece was responsible and even-handed and never ever embezzled any of the money to set herself up as a newspaper publisher and concert producer and media mogul with new expensive cars and lots of first-class pan-pacific travel no not her haha her of course the trustee did all that hundreds of thousands of dollars missing and an unholy mess of sifting through money transfers and property purchases in three countries the niece also had a bigamous marriage to some loser in the Philippines her legal husband in North America was bedridden and dying slowly to whom she sent buckets of her aunt's money to build a luxury villa she vehemently denied such a relationship existed she also had photos of the wedding on her Facebook page not the smartest in Basel around there from where I sat in the attorney's office representing the poor relations trying to stop the trustees embezzlement the craziest part of it all was that after years of fighting we finally got complete financial disclosure for the trust on like the 22nd of December and it was such a Christmas miracle that I almost put off my Christmas trip to New York City to gleefully bore through every poorly redacted line of it all so we had the rich old dance ashes sitting on our bookshelf for years since the dispute about what to do with her remains was part of it all not a lawyer but I have a crazy story my grandma's sister was a narcissist and extremely vindictive she and her husband gained a significant number of assets over the years including a somewhat profitable farm with over 100 acres of fields they had a few children all boys and they all had wives and children of their own her husband died about six years before she did somehow in their 50-plus years of marriage and living on said farm had they never bothered to go to a lawyer and writer will instead she wrote a note and left it in their safe of legal documents saying that nothing was to go to wife of son who died almost 20 years ago or her children and said aunts grandchildren this because the son's wife was more outspoken and wouldn't be controlled by her and absolutely despised her and my entire family too so everything went into probate and the kids are still trying to get everything squared away a year later but the people she wanted excluded should be getting something out of it too

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Id: XUTP7qepfRE

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2019