Tag: estate

Iota Eta Sigma

Words I didn’t expect to type in the 21st C.E., “Good for Sting!”. If only Sam Walton had been as insistent upon his progeny finding their own way, or Donald Trump’s father…

Sting’s children cannot expect to inherit his multimillion-pound wealth, the rock star has said, joining the ranks of the super-rich who have claimed that passing on their vast fortunes to their offspring could do more harm than good.

The 62-year-old musician, who is estimated to be worth £180m and has three sons and three daughters, said he did not want “to leave them trust funds that are albatrosses round their necks”.

“They have to work,” he told the Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine . “All my kids know that and they rarely ask me for anything, which I appreciate. Obviously, if they were in trouble I would help them, but I’ve never really had to do that. They have this work ethic that makes them want to succeed on their own merit.”

Sting insisted there would in fact not be a huge fortune left for his children, who are aged between 18 and 37.

“I told them there won’t be much money left because we are spending it,” he said. “We have a lot of commitments. What comes in we spend, and there isn’t much left.”

(click here to continue reading Sting: My Children Won’t Inherit My Wealth – Business Insider.)

I Will Ransom Them From The Power of the Grave

Speaking of estates, a couple years ago, my parents mentioned that they’ve executed their will, splitting their estate three ways between my brother, my sister and me, with my sister getting 34%. We are lucky in that we get along well, and that the amount we are talking about is certainly less than $2,000,000…

Some other wealthy folks of note also doing the right thing:

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, has said that his children could not expect to inherit the vast majority of his estimated $76bn fortune.

“They won’t have anything like that. They need to have a sense that their own work is meaningful and important,” he has been quoted as saying. “You’ve got to make sure they have a sense of their own ability and what they’re going to go and do.”

Simon Cowell, the music mogul whose son Eric was born earlier this year, has said he will most likely leave his estimated £225 million fortune for charity, explaining: ““I don’t believe in passing on from one generation to another.”

British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has said she was “determined” that her children should have no financial security as “it ruins people not having to earn money”.

Anita Roddick, the Body Shop founder, left her entire £51m fortune to charity after describing leaving money to one’s own family as “obscene”.

…And John Roberts, the chief executive of white goods retailer ao.com, has said he will not pass his estimated £500m wealth to his children, in order that they could have normal lives and a sense of achievement.

Don’t Outlive Your Money

More data about the need for estate reform in the US

she requested a copy of the will. It turns out her grandmother, who was suffering from severe Alzheimer’s, had signed a will in September 2012 that reaffirmed a 2007 will that split her assets among her five children, with her son’s share going to his children. Five days later — and a week before she died — the grandmother signed another will that disinherited her son’s children.

…And it raised common competing issues in these cases: Grandma may have had diminished capacity or been swayed by her daughters, he said. “But judges work very hard to protect individual rights to dispose of their property as they wish.”

The bar to overturn a will is high. “The capacity needed to make a will is very low, lower than to enter into a legal contract,” said Adam von Poblitz, head of estate planning for Citi Private Bank. “You could have someone who had dementia, but if they had moments of lucidity they could execute a fully valid will.”

For Kate, it wasn’t only about the money but about how her aunts treated her. “They started calling us greedy from the beginning,” she said.

Disinheriting family members is an extreme step and one that is not even allowed in many countries. John Davis, faculty chairman of the families in business program at Harvard Business School, has studied inheritance laws around the world and found that in most places people have limited discretion over leaving money to heirs.

“Whether it’s sharia in Muslim countries or the Napoleonic Code throughout Europe and parts of Latin America, what you give to your heirs is tightly prescribed,” Mr. Davis said. “Anglo-Saxon countries are the exception to this rule.”

In reality, Mr. Davis said, unequal inheritance is rare even in the United States, though he often advocates for it to be used more, particularly when a family business is involved.

(click here to continue reading When a Will Divides an Estate, and Also Divides a Family – NYTimes.com.)

All too frequently the lawyers are the ones who end up with the bulk of the inheritance, especially in cases where litigation is involved. Not to mention, the estate always seems to be smaller than anticipated by the aggrieved parties…