It is interesting to note how Ms Lynn Beattie skilfully talked her elderly sick employer to amend his will to give 30% of his huge estate to five of the organizations with prestigious law firms in USA and keepsake of a cane with a silver handle as well as a photograph of the deceased at Princeton to her. Once the new will was drafted, she adeptly substituted one paragraph to exchange things around to benefit herself. She was smart to pick a lawyer who did not qualify to become a partner in her employer's Law firm to witness the signing of the improved version of the new will.
The long and short of it meant Ms Beattie inherited a cool 70 million dollars while Chester(son of the millionaire who lived away from his dad) was left with a silver handled cane and Joni (daughter of the millionaire who lived in another country) was to get an old picture of her dad.
Recently I attended a wake of the husband of my mum's girl hood friend. During his final illness, the deceased's wife turned down an appointment for a proper will to be drawn up. She chose to save a few hundred dollars and decided to put the entire estate into one off spring's name as caretaker. For the moment, it seemed a convenient and economical decision. But no one lives more than a hundred and twenty five years, should that caretaker dies intestate then all the worldly goods would go to the family, who is to say whether these individuals would restore what was rightfully the rest of the siblings (uncles and aunties)?
Very often decisions of this kind would eventually cause families to fragment, the wealth left behind became a curse to alienate the heirs rather than to bless them.
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