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turkeygiant t1_j6lplzv wrote

Reply to comment by necro_kederekt in The letters of T. S. Eliot to Emily Hale that were kept sealed from 1956 to 2020 have been released for free online by RunDNA

This ties into something that a lot of people don't actually realize, a personal will is a incredibly weak legal document in many jurisdictions that only carries weight until somebody contests it. Lets say you are a perfectly mentally competent person but decide to leave your entire multi-million dollar fortune in a trust to take care of your poodle should you pass away because you don't particularly like your family. Your family can absolutely contest that decision, they don't even have to prove you were incompetent in any way, they can just say "its dumb to use all this money to care for a poodle, we are their kids, we want the money" and if a judge finds this to be a reasonable assertion they can just override your wishes. Any respect given to your wishes after you die are either due to the niceties of your family and friends respecting those wishes, or a judge deciding they are reasonable to follow.

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necro_kederekt t1_j6lpwdw wrote

That sounds nearly believable, but… I have a hard time believing any pets would be getting 100 million dollars if it were that easy to disrupt. Right? Like, people get very weird around money. Are you saying that those people’s families just happen to be very nice and not have any problem with the poodle getting all the money? Or just that the judge happened to think it was a reasonable use of the money.

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turkeygiant t1_j6lvuu4 wrote

Well the answer to that I think is that stories of these animals with trusts set up in wills are mostly apocryphal, though you could set up a trust while you were still alive if you had the cash and bypass the whole process.

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