Lawyers Who Write Wills Are Sharing The 40 Weirdest And Craziest Requests Their Clients Have Made

Not a Lawyer, but an aging woman my family knew left her house(large, and in a very affluent neighborhood) and estate to family friends for so long as her cats were alive and taken care of in said house. After they died, the house was to be sold and the remaining estate donated.

The weird thing is, it's been like 20 years and the cats are still alive.

Also, they've changed color.

My great aunt who had no children put in her will that after a certain percent of her money was distributed evenly amongst her nieces and nephews, the remaining money would go to my dad provided he use it to throw a big family reunion party. Even after her death she brought the family together, it was a great party in her honor!

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

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

Not a lawyer, but I work at a law firm. One client left $100,000.00 to his two cats so they could "maintain their current lifestyle".

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.

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.

Lawyer here.

Wrote in my own will that I wish to be cremated and my funeral shall take place 3 miles off shore. My ashes are to be placed in a small wooden boat. Members of my funeral party will then compete for a $10,000 prize from my estate by shooting flaming arrows at my remains. Crossbows are prohibited.

I (early 20s) was forced to write a will due to the health insurance i get at work, and, amongst sensible stuff, the in-house lawyer said it was totally okay for this clause to be added:

"My funeral wishes are that i be buried in a coffin which has been springloaded, such that opening the coffin would cause alarm to future archeologists"

Then a bunch of stuff about if this is to costly i'd be cremated and have my ashes scattered in a specific place.

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*****g hated the cats but the kids wouldn’t let them get rid of the cats.

My own grandmother specified which of the children and grandchildren should get which of the family recipes, and somehow felt the need to include commentary about why certain decisions were made. One recipe was this Prohibition era recipe for beer which I knew my uncle, also a home brewer, wanted, but she left it to me, with the comment that "I know you wanted it, Teddy, but she has the second-best penmanship of the girls and will make you a copy."

And then like eight pages later, in among the specific descriptions of her vast collection of romance novels (really,) was a line: "And [specific Jude Devereaux title] to Spidey, who will please subtract about half the hops before she copies the beer recipe for her Uncle Teddy so that any of us can drink it. Our Jon had his IPA last summer and just about died."

Uncle Jon just about burst into tears laughing and Uncle Teddy had long since left the room because he has no f***s whatsoever to give about romance novels. Uncle Jon, of course, was still in the room because there was also still Yuengling.

And no, I have no idea how she got this will done. My guess is she wrote it herself and the law students who come to her independent-living building signed off on it. It was...elaborate, that's for sure. Total value of the estate was well under eight thousand dollars, so it was mostly a funny last letter from Grandma.

I am a qualified solicitor, my favourite two are:

1. A lady wanted to create a trust fund of £100,000, for her pet fish. When I asked if it was a special kind of fish, she confirmed it was just a normal goldfish but she wanted it to be fed fresh avocado every day and be looked after by a local dog walker after she died. She was absolutely serious.

2. Another lady confessed she had a secret daughter, and she wanted to leave the daughter some money and photographs without the rest of her family finding out. Even her husband does not know. That will be a fun conversation when she passes away.

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 sister’s mother in-law is leaving her house to her three sons. If one wants to sell out his third of the house, he has to sell it to the other two brothers for $1.

I work in probate. The oddest thing I’ve seen in a will is to euthanize their beloved horse, have it cremated and it’s ashes scattered with the decedent. Lucky for her horse, she named a horse that was already dead so the one she got afterwards lived to see another farm.

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

When my grandfather passed it was discovered they they had been closet millionaires. No one in the family knew, but some good investments and frugal habits learned during the depression had turned out well for them. Of course they had 11 kids, so it got parceled down to about $100,000 each. Side note: Parents were encouraged to give their kids a slice and I just put a down payment on my first house -- thanks memere and pepere!

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 and his law partner opened a small law firm "out of a broom closet", in a small Midwestern town in the 50s. Most of their cases were wills and contracts, small town stuff.

His very first client was an old farmer who wanted his will made, that left, among other things, a taxidermied dog to his only son.

By the mid 60s the firm was rapidly outgrowing their tiny office. A local lawyer died suddenly, leaving his office on the town square up for grabs. They took it sight unseen, my granddad and his partner got an awesome lease on huge law office suite on the town square, 30 yards from the courthouse.

The first client guy died the very day they got the keys to the new office. His son was the first client at the new office, he came in with the taxidermied dog while they were literally moving boxes. He dealt with his father's estate, and planned his own estate. And then he asked my grandad to store the taxidermied dog for a week while he fumigated. My grandfather agreed to put the dog into an unused office, and the guy went on his way.

When my granddad moved the dog into an upstairs office, he found a locked wall safe that hadn't been mentioned in the lease. The property owner had no idea it was even there, let alone the combination, and told my grandad he could have whatever he found.

My granddad called his best buddies, a couple of young lawyers, doctors, a realtor, and the local mortician, to come help him crack the safe. They tried to crack the safe, even using one of the doctors stethoscopes. Much to their chagrin, they failed miserably. Feeling defeated, they finally called the local locksmith, who managed to get it unlocked. They paid the locksmith before he looked inside, not knowing what sensitive material they might have found.

That was a good call. There was no money, but they found a mason jar full of hashish, and a couple of quarts of moonshine. It all magically disappeared, and by complete coincidence the parties they threw were the stuff of small town legends.

The guy came back for the dog a week later, and my grandfather told him that he thought the dog was a lucky charm. The guy redid his will a few years later, and left the taxidermied dog to the firm. It was still there when I was a little girl in the 80s, every time my granddad would bring me to the office I would pet it the whole time.

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

i got some rock my grandpa really liked.