True Stories #386 - Weird Wills

What will you leave to others in your Last Will & Testament? Some final requests have been incredibly odd.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you're about to hear is
a true story. Actually, this is a series of stories
regarding our last wills and testaments. In your will, what
will you leave to whom? And how and why? Unfortunately,

(00:27):
this is a question that the majority of Americans cannot
even answer, because only about a third of the population
actually has a will. This means that they do not
have proper estate planning, maybe they don't even have assets
to leave anybody, or maybe they just don't want to
think about death. But for those that do, and for

(00:49):
many who have made a last will and testament, some
of their final wishes have been shall we say unique.
Perhaps One of the most famous examples involves the musician
and comedian from TV's Golden Age, Jack Benny. He died
in nineteen seventy four. His will left an instruction that

(01:12):
a florist deliver a single, long stemmed red rose to
the home of his wife every day. Mary Livingstone would
get a rose every day until her final day, and
as she would live until June the thirtieth, nineteen eighty three,
that meant that she received a total of three thousand,

(01:35):
one hundred and eight roses. The UK's Roger Brown realized
he was going to lose his battle with prostate cancer,
but he had a sense of humor, so before he
died in twenty thirteen, the sixty seven year old made
this provision. He designated thirty five hundred British pounds about

(01:56):
forty seven hundred American for his surviving friends to go
and take a vacation in Berlin and get drunk. One
of the friends actually left a note for the surviving
family with a tongue in cheek apology for blowing thousands
on beer and who knows what else, right, what happens

(02:18):
in Berlin stays in Berlin. Leona Helmsley was the notorious
billionaire businesswoman who died in two thousand and four. A
controversial figure in life, actually much reviled for the way
she treated people. She did prison time for tax evasion
and other crimes. She was known publicly as the Queen

(02:42):
of Meen. When she passed away of congestive heart failure
at the age of eighty seven, she left a few
billion to a charitable trust. She included a few million
dollars for her thirteen hundred square foot mausoleum to be
routinely washed or steam cleaned because she hated dirt. And

(03:04):
there was another twelve million dollar trust fund designated four
her Maltese dog Trouble, eight thousand dollars for grooming, twelve
hundred for food, one hundred thousand dollars for full time security,
guardianship fees other expenses. Trouble would be covered completely for

(03:26):
a full ten years. The court ultimately reduced that number
to two million, but I doubt Trouble was too troubled.
What about bad blood between blood relatives. Back in nineteen nineteen,
Michigan millionaire Willington Bert prepared for his own death with

(03:48):
a will that commanded that his vast fortune could not
be touched by his family until twenty one years after
the death of his last surviving grandchild. So when he
passed away, there were twelve immediate family members told that

(04:08):
they were beneficiaries of great riches, but they couldn't actually
get access to their share of the one hundred and
ten million dollars for about a hundred years out. Oh,
the rich ones are so often the fun ones. So
here is another wealthy aristocrat, a man of noble Portuguese lineage,

(04:33):
Luis Carlos de Narona Cabral de Camara. This is a
man whose life had been somewhat tragic. He had been
conceived out of wedlock in a Puritan culture. He was
unloved by his mother. He had no children of his own.
He spent his life with no friends and pretty much alone,
becoming an alcoholic. He would drink himself to death in

(04:56):
two thousand and seven, leaving behind a twelve room apartment
in central Lisbon, a house and gimurage, two major bank accounts,
a luxury car, two motorbikes and more. He had no heirs,
he had no friends. What does a wealthy guy do
if he doesn't want everything to go to the state?

(05:18):
Luis Carlos de Narona Cabral de Camara picked twelve random
names out of a phone book. That's right. He just
opened page to page to page and stuck his finger
down and saw a name. And then twelve random strangers
were contacted, and they were told they were among the

(05:40):
luckiest people in the world. Someone they had never mett
had left them big money. They were literally the heirs
of strange fortune. Phone books. That takes us back, doesn't it?
Remember the days of phone books? But even today some
perhaps there is a rich person who is scanning phone

(06:03):
numbers on the Internet, seeking someone who will receive that
someday call informing them that a new life has suddenly
started thanks to a wealthy stranger recently departed. And this
list of weird wills has been a true story True

(06:32):
Stories podcast dot com