According to this Washington Post article, Sean Taylor, the late Washington Redskins safety, died without a will to give direction for the distribution of his nearly $6 million estate.  The bulk of the estate went to his daughter pursuant to Florida intestacy laws.  Now his mother is trying to lay claim to some of the estate.  Known for giving lavish gifts to various family members during his life, it seems rather significant that what little estate planning he did (joint account, life insurance beneficiary designation), did not include his mother.

Although Taylor’s estate was large, not having proper estate planning in place can cause these same problems for any other economic situation.  If you would like to keep this from happening to your family, please call our office at (616) 827-7596 to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session.  To show my continued support for my loyal blog readers, I will waive the usual fee for this session for the first 5 families who call to schedule and specifically mention this blog post (a $500 value!).

If you live in the West Michigan area, ArtPrize (http://www.artprize.org/home) is all the rage.  It’s what people are talking about and I am personally looking forward to a walking tour tomorrow.

Seeing and hearing about all the various art pieces, from sculptures to paintings, got me thinking . . . many of these pieces are quite valuable – have the artists or owners properly planned for what would happen to the treasured pieces if they pass away?  That’s right, estate planning plays a key role in ensuring that your prized possessions – intellectual, spiritual, and human assets – are dealt with according to YOUR wishes, not those of the state or courts.  Estate planning is not just about passing on your money.

If you want the peace of mind of knowing that your WHOLE wealth is properly planned, contact me for a Wealth Planning Session.  The first 5 people who do so and specifically mention this blog post will receive the Wealth Planning Session at no cost as my gift to my blog readers (a $500 value).

According to the Wall Street Journal Online (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346930384296134.html), the U.S. House of Representatives is likely to block the repeal of the estate tax that is set to take effect January 1, 2010.  The debate continues on what will be done to provide a more permanent solution and additional certainty to estate planning practitioners.  Current thought is that Congress will, at a minimum, hold the Federal estate tax exemption amount at $3.5 million for individuals, rather than let the estate tax lapse in 2010.

Let’s hope they give this some more serious thought, and soon, as virtually everything is taking a back seat to the current health care debate.  If they do not take action, the estate tax will be repealed in 2010 (with changes in basis treatment) and the exemption amount will return to $1 million in 2011.

Here is a little bit of Friday humor for everyone.  According to this article on Money Central, these are (in their opinion) the 10 strangest will bequests on record:

10. To boldly go..

Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek television series (motto: To boldly go where no man has gone before), appropriately had his ashes blasted into space on a satellite and distributed as it orbited the earth.

The memorial spaceflight, in 1997, quickly set a trend – especially among fellow Trekkies. James Doohan, who played chief engineer Scottie on the Starship Enterprise was also projected into orbit as did astronaut Gordon Cooper. Bit tough on the families if they want to leave flowers.

9.  Doggone

German Countess Carlotta Liebenstein left a staggering fortune of 139 million German marks (about £43 million) to her beloved pet dog Gunther III when she died in 1991. The hound and his offspring – imaginatively named Gunther IV – were able to live in the lap of luxury in a mansion with a personal maid, chauffeur and customised pool.

This isn’t the only pampered pooch to have benefited from a bequest. New York hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, dubbed the “Queen of Mean” during a 1989 trial for tax evasion, left $12 million (£6 million) of her estimated $8 billion estate for the upkeep of her Maltese terrier Trouble. Two of her four grandchildren meanwhile got nothing.

Unsurprisingly, the request by Helmsley, famous for her quip that “only the little people pay taxes,” sparked nothing but trouble. After the will was contested, the pooch was stripped of $10 million by a Manhattan judge leaving the poor thing with a paltry $2 million. It’s a dog’s life.

8. The Great Stork Derby

Eccentric lawyer Charles Vance Millar was well known in Toronto, Canada, for his love of practical jokes and he saved the best until last.

He bequeathed a large sum from his significant estate to the woman in Toronto who could produce the most children in the ten year period after his death. The resulting contest, after his death in 1926, became known as the Great Stork Derby. The four winning mothers, Annie Katherine Smith, Kathleen Ellen Nagle, Lucy Alice Timleck and Isabel Mary Maclean, each received C$125,000 for their nine children.

The pranks didn’t end there. Millar’s will also left shares in racetracks and breweries to anti-gambling and temperance supporters. Three men who were known to despise each other were granted joint lifetime tenancy in Millar’s Jamaican holiday home.

7. Death wish

Revenge is sweet – even from beyond the grave. American housewife Mary Kuhery is reported to have left her husband $2 as long as he promised to spend at least half of it on a rope with which to hang himself.

In 1960 Samuel Bratt was slightly less vengeful. However, he still grasped the opportunity to get even with his wife who had never allowed him to smoke. He left her £330,000, a huge sum back then, provided that she smoke five cigars a day.

6. No women allowed

When misogynist American lawyer T.M. Zink died in 1930 he left $50,000 in trust for 75 years by which time he hoped that it would have grown to $3 million. He decreed that the fund should then be used to found the Zink Womanless Library. The words “No women admitted” were to mark each entrance and no books, works of art, or decorations by women were to be permitted. His family challenged the will and won.

5. Alas poor Yorick

Juan Potoachi gave 200,000 pesos to the Teatro Dramatico in Buenos Aires in 1955, on condition that his skull be preserved and used as Yorick in Hamlet. William Shakespeare himself was less generous. The bard left most of his estate to his elder daughter Susannah Hall while his wife only received his “second best bed”.

4. Fangs very much

Harold West was so worried that he would become a vampire after his death, in 1972, that he left strict instructions that his doctor “drive a steel stake through my heart to make sure that I am properly dead”. That should do it

3. Live forever

Predeceased by his wife and two daughters, John Bowman, from Vermont, America, was convinced that after his death, in 1891, the family would be reincarnated. In anticipation, he left a trust fund for the maintenance of his 21-room mansion, including a demand that servants prepare dinner nightly in case the Bowmans were hungry when they returned. The money ran out in 1950.

2. Monkey business

An 83- year-old Danish widow left the equivalent of half a million Danish crowns (about £40,000) to six chimpanzees – Jimmy, Trunte, Fifi, Trine, Grinni and Gigi – who lived at the Copenhagen Zoo. Senior Deputy Judge Christian Notlevsen, who read out the testament in front of their cage, said the heirs had behaved better than many people he had seen in court during readings of wills.

1. Poetic licence

The last wish of Donal Russell, from Springfield in the US state of Oregon, was to have his body skinned, his hide tanned like leather and then used to bind books of self-penned poetry. The 62-year old wordsmith stated that his body “be skinned from the head down and tanned for the purpose of face binding volumes of my verse.”

The squeamish funeral directors refused, so his widow asked the courts to help her honour his wishes. The request was turned down because it violated laws about what could be done to human remains. How prosaic.

The Wall Street Journal online had a great article here about providing a means of passing your electronic assets through your estate plan.  This consideration is becoming more important as our information is increasingly stored online or in other digital formats.  The article provides some great food for thought and I, for one, am continually looking for new ways to help my clients address the concerns the article raises – something my background in Information Technology makes me uniquely suited to do.

It appears from this ESPN online article that Steve McNair had no will and likely had done no estate planning.  Rather than go in-depth to explain the potential disastrous implications, I will direct you to this post by David Shulman, a Florida estate planning attorney.  Mr. Shulman provides an excellent analysis of the situation.  I encourage you to share your thoughts, comments, and suggestions on the situation and Mr. Shulman’s analysis.

I had a recent visit that reminded me of the uncertainty surrounding family behavior and the effect it can have on a person’s estate.  This gentleman’s father passed away a year ago.  He knew that his father had a will (he and his mother saw it), had a general idea of what it said, and also knew that his father had several bank accounts and some life insurance.  The stickler is that he cannot provide any supporting documentation (bank statements, life insurance policies, the will, etc.), which makes it very difficult to make an assessment of any potential claims he may have against his father’s estate.

Then the family “fun” started.  Allegedly, his brother “lost” the will and this gentleman does not know who the attorney is who drafted the will.  Although that can put a wrench in the process, there are lost will procedures that can be followed to effectively probate the lost will.  The “fun” continues.  Allegedly, the brother also has been cashing checks made out to the father and recently has been carrying a lot of cash – arguably from his father’s accounts.  I have my doubts about the veracity of some of those statements as I know bank procedures and am fairly certain those transactions could not have occured without some level of authorizing document.

Still, do you think the father had any idea something like this could happen after his passing?  Arguably, there was a will, and that was good planning by the father.  As shown by this example, however, there are still contingencies that can occur that will keep your wishes from being carried out according to your plan.  I encourage anyone doing estate planning to make sure they seek out an attorney who will help you address these contingencies by providing practical advice for protecting your estate planning documents and making sure they are followed after your passing.