40 Lawyers Share The Most Surprising Requests They’ve Ever Seen In Someone’s Will

Might be late to the party and not a lawyer, but my great-grandad had a clause in his will that stated something along the lines of, “if any of the beneficiaries decide to dispute the contents of the decedent’s estate, their share becomes $1 and nothing else.”

Seemed like a pretty good way to maintain harmony among his survivors.

"To my wife I leave her lover and the knowledge that I was never the fool she thought me. To my son I leave the pleasure of working for a living - for 25 years, he thought the pleasure was all mine." --- Best dis ever. Was in my Wills & Trusts book in law school as an example of people talking s**t in their wills (you're supposed to discourage them as lawyers from doing so)

My grandpa put in his will a chocolate bar for every one of his grandkids. Well, I have like 12 cousins, and it was very difficult to track down where a couple of them went. All the estates and money he had in his will were at a standstill for months because they couldn’t find a couple of cousins. We had to show the court that we put in effort to hire someone to track them down, etc. The lawyer that was helping execute the will was blown away that another lawyer allowed this, and why he wouldn’t highly suggest Grandpa not do it.

But I’m not complaining, 'cause I got a Toblerone out of the deal!

My grandfather left me $1.00, he had dementia and confused my dad ripping him off with me. He left the rest of the family between $100,000 And a few million each. They all said they felt horrible because they knew the details, but not horrible enough to give up any of their share. The way I see it is it was never my money to begin with, so it's not a loss. I'm just glad my sister got a hundred thousand,she needed it more than any of the others.

When my grandfather passed his will asked that I clean out his shed, and I alone.

I found marijuana seeds, old reel style film p***ography, which was hilarious and a bunch of other unsavory paraphernalia. 50's flick knives too.

Just last week I handled a matter where the parents left millions in artwork to various people, wads of cash to various charities, and only left their kids the family cats. Turns out they did it because the kids got them the cats to comfort the parents in their old age and the parents f**king hated the cats but the kids wouldn’t let them get rid of the cats.

Rich uncle of mine, real crazy, and not in a good way...

When he died he had no friends... He left his entire estate to an Elvis impersonator. Everything.

Best will story I personally know of:

The Father had a valuable antique Grandfather Clock, he also had 2 daughters. His solution:

If I die on an even day, daughter A gets the clock, an odd day and Daughter B gets it.

The Daughter who did not get the clock got an equivalent cash award based on the value of the clock.

I know of the event because I had to service the clock several times over the years.

In my trusts & estates class in law school, we read a case about a man who left everything to his wife, but only if she got his body stuffed and left it on the living room couch forever.

Luckily for her, the court invalidated that part of the husband's will. IIRC, part of the reasoning was that it would make it impossible for her to date/remarry if she had her husband's creepy dead body glaring at anyone who came to see her.

My maternal* grandpa was wealthy. He divorced my maternal grandma, remarried, and promptly dropped dead of a heart attack. He was only 48 and had no will so everything went to his new wife, my moms stepmother. She was actually really nice and was planning on making sure that everything was "fair"...till she died in a car accident 6 months later. She was a widow herself prior to marrying grandpa and had a now orphaned 15 year old son from the previous marriage who got everything. My mom and her siblings had to go to the auction at their childhood home and buy back as much of their heirlooms and memories as they could afford (and, truthfully, stole some of what they couldnt).

My grandma's will literally says that one daughter is to get nothing, that it is her intent to leave her nothing, and that it is her wish that the daughter not be informed of her death until after she has been buried.

Half of her will is just language ensuring that everyone knows that she is intentionally leaving that daughter nothing, and that she is not able to contest that decision.

A friend of mine was adopted at birth. When her mom died, the will gave half the estate to her 'two natural daughters'. My friend got nothing.

Wtf

Lots of people sending their friends and family on weird errands to spread their ashes (leaving money for people to take trips and spread their ashes around the world).

Pet trusts are a fun one: leaving a whole whack of money in a trust to be used for the care of the pet during their life.

However, my favourite ever (that I obviously didn’t draft) was a lawyer who left the bulk of his estate (millions in today’s dollars) to whatever Toronto-area woman had the most children at a specific date some years in the future. I recall the winner had 10.

My grandfather saved his kidney stone so that he could leave it to my cousin. They never really got along.

Not a lawyer but my mom put in her will that if she dies under suspicious circumstances that my sister and I won’t be left anything. She watches a lot of true crime.

"No, ma'am, in order to bequeath something, you actually have to own it."

We had a client who was a widowed farmer who owned several heavy equipment (Caterpillar trucks, etc). He had two sons who were already working with him at the farm and a daughter who was working in the city. He willed the heavy equipment to the daughter, when asked why since these equipment were essential to the farm. He said that the farm was to go his kids equally but his girl needed to know he always wanted her to join their venture and dispel her notions of alienation because she was a girl.

Saw this answer from a similar question some time ago. When a dad died he set up financial installments so long as his daughter remains under a certain weight. Dude was controlling her diet from the grave.

My vindictive grandmother left my aunt $20 as a reminder of the $20 my aunt stole from her once.

Not a lawyer, but an estate planning paralegal for many years. I've read, drafted or executed thousands of wills and trusts with clients. My first nitpicky comment is that the common belief that lawyers actually assemble the whole family and hold a "reading of the will" is entirely a construct of TV. You would never sit there and just read a will to people; it's mostly a bunch of legalese about bonds and payment of taxes and the powers of the executor. Only a very small portion of the will actually pertains to distributions, and in many cases it's just a paragraph stating that everything goes to the spouse if living, otherwise equally to the kids (or to the trust, which then says it all goes to spouse-then-kids.)

Believe it or not, they're usually pretty mundane. When strings are attached, it's usually just parents trying to make sure their kids go to college or they get a smaller distribution, or just have to wait longer to get their money. People who don't have kids usually name about 2 dozen beneficiaries, which is cumbersome and annoying, especially since a lot of times they don't even have much money to divide. People with kids almost always just leave the money to them equally.

Probably the most f**ked-up thing I've seen is a couple different clients who included provisions to disinherit kids and grandkids if they married a black person. That's their prerogative, and we'll serve them professionally, but we tended not to get too cozy or chatty at those signings, unlike with many of the nice clients with whom we would become friendly. Just get 'em in, get 'em out in those cases.