Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog

Son struggles with a decision of honoring his father’s deathbed wish or destroying a masterpiece

The following is from David M. Smith, To burn or not to burn?, posted on the Toronto Estate Law Blog by Hull & Hull LLP on March 6, 2008:

Dmitri Nabokov, the 73 yr old sole surviving heir of Vladimir Nabokov, continues his 30-yr struggle with his father's deathbed request that his last unpublished work, The Original of Laura, be destroyed.  The stakes are high for Laura; at one point, Dmitri referred to it as "the most concentrated distillation of [my father's] creativity.***

The long twisted saga may find its fate as a cliffhanger of sorts.  In a dramatic verdict, Dmitri indicated late last month that he had indeed "decided to make a decision" about what to do, but that he would "neither disclose publicly either the decision or the deed."  Apparently (or should I say apparition-ly?), Dmitri reached his decision after an imagined ghostly conversation with his dead father.  Stay tuned for the future unveiling of either a box of Laura's ashes or what might be Nabokov's greatest literary work.

Special thanks to Bruce S. Johnson (Associate Dean for Information Services, Thomas J. and Mary E. Heck and Leo H. Faust Memorial Designated Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University) for bringing this blog posting to my attention.

"Lethal Choice" -- Intellectually stimulating and emotionally charged novel

Lethal Choice by Dr. Stanley A. Terman, PhD, MD is an intellectually stimulating and emotionally charged drama that keeps you reading into the night and continues to haunt you into the daylight hours.  Lethal Choice should be at the top of your must-read list of books.  Dr. Stanley Terman not only expertly weaves a plot of intrigue and suspense but delves into the moral dilemmas facing individuals as they approach death.

Lethal Choice is a book for everyone...a thriller for readers seeking "a tale of terror" and an educational thought-provoking story for readers who desire "a tale of substance."  Lethal Choice is a powerful novel that embraces timely issues relevant to the medical, legal, and religious communities but more importantly to the average person who is at the mercy of the controversies surrounding end-of-life decisions.

The Charles Dickens-Estate Planning Interface

The following excerpt is from John Authers, Passing on wealth, Financial Times, July 9, 2007:

The Victorians had some lessons for the very rich who have been produced by the wealth-creation of the past decade.

The crucial question is whether the new breed of philanthropists will turn into a new generation of Mrs Pardiggles.

Mrs Pardiggle is one of the more loathsome characters in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, the tragic story of a contested will. It is arguably literature’s greatest ever warning of the hazards of inadequate estate planning.

As well as lawyers, Dickens was also deeply sceptical about philanthropists. He divided them into two classes: “One, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.” Mrs Pardiggle is in the former group.

Special thanks to Prof. Joel C. Dobris of the University of California-Davis for bringing this article to my attention.

English Professor Seeks Literature Revealing the Testator's Mind

I am posting the following inquiry on behalf of Elizabeth Stone, Professor of English, Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University:

As part of some research I am doing, I am looking for works of fiction (novels, short stories, plays, poems, films) in which a last will and testament figures prominently.  Particularly, I am interested in works that reveal the mind of the testator.  (What is it that informs the spirit of the bequests?  How much consciousness, if any, does the testator have of the impact of the bequest on the survivors?) Second, I am interested in works that explore the impact of the will on the survivors' relationship with one another.  How does the content of the will affect their relationship?
   
Among the works I already have on my list: Shaw's MAJOR BARBARA, Forster's HOWARDS END, George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH, Trollope's ORLY FARM, Maile Meloy's FAMILY DAUGHTER.  KING LEAR doesn't actually have a will, but it is about an aging father's bequest to his daughters, the conditions he imposes and the consequences of the conditions.
      
I already have a few memoirs about legacies in mind--one is Rich Cohen's SWEET'N LOW, another is Dorothy Gallagher's HOW I CAME INTO MY INHERITANCE, and the third is MOMMY DEAREST about Joan Crawford's daughter--but I'd be interested to know of more.
   
Thank you in advance for whatever citations any of you might be able to send my way. Please send them to ElizStone@aol.com

"The Bad Beginning" Made into a Movie

Earlier on this blog, I discussed a children's book with a tremendous number of estate planning themes.

I have just discovered that this book, along with others in the same series, was made into a movie which was released in December 2004 entitled Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Perhaps I should rent the DVD and see if the movie retained these themes.  But, with exams to grade, it is not high on my "to do" list.

If you have viewed the movie, let me know what you think!

"The Bad Beginning" -- Children's Book With Estate Planning Themes

One of my eclectic students, Graham Smith, recently recommended that I read a children’s book entitled The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket because of its thematic elements revolving around various aspects of estate planning.

I followed his advice and read the book.  It is unlike any children’s book I have ever read.  Ominously, the book begins with following warning, “If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.”

The book revolves around the lives of three children who by page eight lose their loving and wealthy parents in a tragic fire.  The orphans are then sent to a distant relative who forces them to live in unsanitary conditions and perform child labor.  The relative makes matters worse by engaging in acts of child abuse such as beating a child, forcing a fourteen year old child into marriage, binding, gagging, and confining an infant, making death treats, and committing other heinous acts.

Despite the nightmares this book may cause its tender readers (like me) to have, the book provides a tremendous boost to the value of a legal education and that it is never too early to start.  The older children find a way to access and study law books.  The legal knowledge they gain leads to the very happy “almost” ending.  (Things get worse after the author’s warns, “If you like, you may shut this book this instant and not read the unhappy ending that is to follow.”)

Here is a sampling of the wills, estates, and trusts topics covered in this book:

• Trusts (Not referred to by name but by concept, “I will be handling [your parents’] enormous fortune [and] [w]hen [oldest child] comes of age, the fortune will be yours, but the bank will take charge of it until you are old enough.”)
• Executor
• Degrees of relationship (e.g., third cousin four times removed)
• Naming of guardians in a will
• Inheritance law
• Marital (“nuptial,” as it is called in the book) law
• In loco parentis