Today we’re looking at the craziest last wills, throwing posthumous high-fives to people who managed to piss off their families from beyond the grave.
Heinrich Heine In 1856
German poet Heinrich Heine left his fortune to his wife, but only on the condition that she remarry. Although it sounds like he had her best interests at heart, Heinrich was mocking her from beyond the grave. The reason he gave for this condition was because that way, “there would be at least one man who would regret [his] death.”
He had previously described his wife as rude and vain, even though he was married to her for 15 years prior to his death.
Charles Vance Miller
Charles Vance Miller was a Canadian attorney who enjoyed a good practical joke and had every intention of taking that love of humour to the grave with him.
He left behind a fortune of around $500,000 on the condition that it would be paid out to whichever Toronto woman gave birth to the most children in the decade after his death.
Many joined the race, and ten years later there was a 4-way tie, with all women giving birth to a total of 9 children. They received $125,000 each, celebrated a little, and then promptly remembered that they now had 9 kids to look after.
Anon In 1928
An anonymous donor left a fortune to help the economy of Britain. The will stipulated that this amount could only be passed on when it was enough to clear the national debt, which it never came close to doing.
That money has been on hold ever since, and while it now amounts to around £350 million, the national debt is over a trillion GBP, so it’s unlikely that it will ever be released. Not like it would make any kind of impact even if it was.
Roger Brown
Roger Brown passed away in 2013 at the age of 67. He wasn’t a rich man, but he did have an inheritance that could have made a difference to the lives of his two sons. Except Brown had no intention of leaving the money to his sons and decided to split it between his 7 friends instead, giving them each £3,500 and stipulating that the money could only be spent on a boozy weekend in a European city.
His friends duly obliged, getting wasted in the name of their friend and pissing off his two children in the process.
Samuel Bratt
Samuel Bratt had a taste for fine cigars, but his wife hated them. She did her best to stop him from smoking, hoping to extend his life as he tried his best to blow smoke in the face of the Grim Reaper. He didn’t appreciate his wife’s efforts and when he died from a stroke in 1960, he left her all of his estate, but only on the condition that she smoke 5 cigars a day for the rest of her life.
We like to think that Bratt loved his wife and was just doing his best to hasten her journey to the other side, where she could continue to pester him for all of eternity.
Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral
Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral de Camara decided to do something a little different with his money, and rather than donating to charity, to family or even to his dogs, he simply chose 70 random people from the Lisbon phone book and gave it all to them.
None of those people were connected to him and many had never heard of him, yet they all profited from his death, receding a phone call that must have sounded like a bad joke.
Wellington Burt
A Legacy of Bitterness Wellington Burt hated his family, and the feeling was definitely mutual. But Wellington was a millionaire with a devious streak a mile wide, and he planned to get the last laugh. In his will, he stipulated that his money was to be passed on to family, but only 21-years after the death of his last grandchild.
This ensured that his money would not go to the family that he knew, or even to their children.
Wellington died in 1919, but his fortune wasn’t passed on until 2010, at which point 12 people collected a share of $110 million.
Leona Helmsley
In 2004, Billionaire Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her 9-year-old dog, a pampered pooch that was set for a life of even more luxury. She had initially planned to leave her money to the poor, before deciding that her dog deserved it more.
The dog was to be looked after by a family member who had been given a little less money, while many of her extended family had been cut out of the will altogether. In the end, the dog didn’t lead the life she had planned for it. Its inheritance was cut to just $2 million by a judge, and it spent its remaining years in hiding after receiving countless death and abduction threats.
Jack Benny
With so much craziness, sexism and stupidity, it’s nice to see wills that make sense, wills that warm the heart a little and remind us that we’re not the cold-hearted bastards that everyone knows we are.
Such is the case with the story of Jack Benny, an American comedian who died in 1974 and left a stipulation in his will that requested a red rose be sent to his wife every day for the rest of her live. Although sweet, we can’t help but think she must have grown sick of the sight of roses by the end and probably cursed her husband.
T.M. Zink
By all accounts T.M. Zink was a bit of a dick. He hated women, he didn’t treat his daughter very well, and he was a lawyer. Which tells you all that you need to know.
Zink wasn’t just content with being a dick when he was alive, and he wanted the world to remember just how despicable he was when he was gone. The world breathed a sigh of relief when Zink died in 1930, followed by a shake of the head when they realised he had pledged $35,000 to build a library that didn’t contain the work of any female author and didn’t allow females to enter.
He left just $5 to his own daughter, with the rest of the money going into an investment fund to pay for the library. But his dreams of creating a sexiest library were thankfully not realised when his daughter challenged the will and claimed the fortune.