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The legal wishes of the dead have long been fertile ground for domestic drama. Shakespeare’s As You Like It opens on the theme: “As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will”.
In Seville, Spain a vibrant and active 85-year-old duchess, who owns way more stuff than any human needs to, defied her six children and married a 60-year-old man. She had to sign over part of her vast estate to her little darlings to shut them up.
Most of us don’t have to worry about estates, entitlements, and trust funds, but I've seen this a lot with elderly parents and their kids (and second marriages). No matter the financial status, children will fight over ugly knick-knacks, and dad’s scruffy robe, and dog-chewed slippers. I’ve heard stories of children who have stolen things out of their sibling's car after a funeral because they wanted some inexpensive tchotchke that had sentimental value.
The death of a spouse or a divorce and remarriage raises questions of who gets the family jewels. This is juicy conflict for a writer. The thematic question has no easy, or clear-cut, answers. It will invoke emotionally charged responses in your readers.
Who gets to decide what is left to whom? Legally the answers are pretty clear: whatever Dick has legal ownership of can be disposed of in any way he likes in his will as long as what he owns isn’t tied up in a trust or must legally to go his spouse. Emotionally, it is a potential field of land mines. If there is no will, it can become a cat fight.
Do his children have a valid claim on Dick’s stuff? Is he obligated to leave them his stuff? Should he leave it to his second, third, or fourth wife? Why should Dick leave his entire album collection to a floozy with a tin ear instead of his darling children who grew up listening to, and loving, those albums? What if they already have all the songs loaded on their IPODs and will probably sell the albums at a flea market?
If there are multiple sets of children, should they all share equally or should Dick leave everything to his favorite charity to avoid conflict?
What if Duchess Jane does not like her children, or a specific child, does that change the level of obligation?
If Sally runs up outrageous debt before she dies, are the children responsible for paying it back? Legally, usually, no. Whatever Sally owed is deducted from what she owned. The rest of her creditors are out of luck. But that might not keep an unscrupulous fellow from coming after her children for it. Her children will be upset if they expected something (particularly a windfall) and find they are to receive nothing.
Kids tend to have an outrageous sense of entitlement to their parents stuff, especially when it is lots of money and half of a small country. If Dick’s children hand him a list of everything they think they should have on the night before his wedding to his new love, there is going to be perpetual conflict.
What if Sally asks her children to go around the house and put Post-Its on all the stuff they want when she dies? There will be intense emotional conflict. They may not want to think of their mother dying. They may not want to admit that they’ve always coveted the ceramic dog that reminds them of evenings spent watching Lassie. Fights are likely to ensue.
Should Jane’s children feel entitled to her stuff? Whatever the parents have worked to amass is surely theirs to do with as they please. We tell our children, "What we have worked for is ours. What you work for is yours." Do those rules change when the parents own half of the Hamptons?
What if Dick dies with no children? Who gets his stuff then? Who should he leave it to? Should it go to nieces and nephews? Siblings he didn’t like and has not spoken to in fifty years? If he does not write a will, it might.
Who has to take care of all the details when Dick dies? His ultra-responsible son or his flighty daughter? The grandchild he never spent time with or the sixth in a long string of wives? There will be conflict either way.
You can reveal a lot about your characters in terms of how they view and respond to this type of situation.
You can show change if Dick refuses to consider such a thing as what he might want when his father passes away. Then, when the event occurs, he finds he does care what happens with his father's tobacco pipe or vintage Rolls Royce. The opposite could be true. He always thought it mattered whether he got the car that took up space in a garage but no longer ran then when his father dies, he couldn't care less about it.
These thematic questions stir up controversy. There are equal arguments for each side. They cause massive conflict at any story level. They have been argued in every genre imaginable and are often the motive in a mystery.
For more on how to motivate your characters based on personality type, check out:
Story Building Blocks II: Crafting Believable Conflict in paperback and E-book.
Story Building Blocks: Build A Cast Workbook in paperback and E-book.
0 Comments on Stirring the plot: Inheritance & Entitlement as of 5/8/2015 11:41:00 AM
Picture this. A legendary hotel concierge and serial womaniser seduces a rich, elderly widow who regularly stays in the hotel where he works. Just before her death, she has a new will prepared and leaves her vast fortune to him rather than her family.
For a regular member of the public, these events could send alarm bells ringing. “She can’t have known what she was doing!” or “What a low life for preying on the old and vulnerable!” These are some of the more printable common reactions. However, for cinema audiences watching last year’s box office smash, The Grand Budapest Hotel directed by Wes Anderson, they may have laughed, even cheered, when it was Tilda Swinton (as Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis) leaving her estate to Ralph Fiennes (as Monsieur Gustave H) rather than her miffed relatives. Thus the rich, old lady disinherits her bizarre clan in what recently became 2015’s most BAFTA-awarded film, and is still up for nine Academy Awards in next week’s Oscars ceremony.
Wills have always provided the public with endless fascination, and are often the subject of great books and dramas. From Bleak House and The Quincunx to Melvin and Howard and The Grand Budapest Hotel, wills are often seen as fantastic plot devices that create difficulties for the protagonists. For a large part of the twentieth century, wills and the lives of dissolute heirs have been regular topics for Sunday journalism. The controversy around the estate of American actress and model, Anna Nicole Smith, is one such case that has since been turned into an opera, and there is little sign that interest in wills and testaments will diminish in the entertainment world in the coming years.
“[The Vegetarian Society v Scott] is probably the only case around testamentary capacity where the testator’s liking for a cooked breakfast has been offered as evidence against the validity of his will.”
Aside from the drama depicted around wills in films, books, and stage shows, there is also the drama of wills in real life. There are two sides to every story with disputed wills and the bitter, protracted, and expensive arguments that are generated often tear families apart. While in The Grand Budapest Hotel the family attempted to solve the battle by setting out to kill Gustave H, this is not an option families usually turn to (although undoubtedly many families have thought about it!).
Usually, the disappointed family members will claim that either the ‘seducer’ forced the relative into making the will, or the elderly relative lacked the mental capacity to make a will; this is known as ‘testamentary capacity’. Both these issues are highly technical legal areas, which are resolved dispassionately by judges trying to escape the vehemence and passion of the protagonists. Regrettably, these arguments are becoming far more common as the population ages and the incidence of dementia increases.
Wes Anderson, director of The Grand Budapest Hotel. By Popperipopp. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The diagnosis of mental illness is now far more advanced and nuanced than it was when courts were grappling with such issues in the nineteenth century. While the leading authority on testamentary capacity still dates from a three-part test laid out in the 1870 Banks v Goodfellow case, it is still a common law decision, and modern judges can (and do) adapt it to meet advancing medical views.
This can be seen in one particular case, The Vegetarian Society v Scott, in which modern diagnosis provided assistance when a question arose in relation to a chronic schizophrenic with logical thought disorder. He left his estate to The Vegetarian Society as opposed to his sister or nephews, for whom he had a known dislike. There was evidence provided by the solicitor who wrote the will that the deceased was capable of logical thought for some goal-directed activities, since the latter was able to instruct the former on his wishes. It was curious however that the individual should have left his estate to The Vegetarian Society, as he was in fact a meat eater. However unusual his choice of heir, the deceased’s carnivorous tendencies were not viewed as relevant to the issues raised in the court case.
As the judge put it, “The sanity or otherwise of the bequest turns not on [the testator’s] for food such as sausages, a full English breakfast or a traditional roast turkey at Christmas; nor does it turn on the fact that he was schizophrenic with severe thought disorder. It really turns on the rationality or otherwise of his instructions for his wills set in the context of his family relations and other relations at various times.”
This is probably the only case around testamentary capacity where the testator’s liking for a cooked breakfast has been offered as evidence against the validity of his will.
For lawyers, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis is potentially a great client. Wealth, prestige, and large fees for the will are then followed by even bigger fees in the litigation. If we are to follow the advice of the judge overseeing The Vegetarian Society v Scott, Gustave H would have inherited all of Madame Céline’s money if she was seen to be wholly rational when making her will.
Will disputes will always remain unappealing and traumatic to the family members involved. However, as The Grand Budapest Hotel has shown us, they still hold a strong appeal for cinema audiences and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Feature image: Reflexiones by Serge Saint. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.
Klise, Kate. 2011. Till Death Do Us Bark (43 Old Cemetery Road series) Ill. by M. Sara Klise,Boston: Harcourt. Advance Reader Copy - due on shelves in Spring 2011
I haven't checked in on the 43 Old Cemetery Road series since Book 1, Dying to Meet You. Till Death Do Us Bark is Book 3 in this unique series of what the author writes of as "graphic epistolary mysteries - or some such unmarketable nonsense." But marketable it is, as this third book in the series (following on the heels of the very successful Regarding the ... series), all of which are illustrated stories told primarily through correspondence.
In Till Death Do Us Bark, young Seymour Hope has now been adopted by writer Ignatius Grumply and his new wife "ghost" writer, Olive C. Spence (not a ghostwriter in the usual sense of the term, but an actual ghost). Seymour finds Secret, a dog belonging to the recently deceased Noah Breth, and decides to keep it, keeping Secret a secret. Ignatius and Olive are upset with Seymour for keeping Secret, the poorly kept secret. A further complication is the peculiar way in Noah Breth disbursed his fortune, converting it into several rare, valuable coins left in various locations in his hometown of Ghastly before he passed away. His children, Kitty and Kanine are fit to be tied.
As you can tell by the amusing names and wordplay, Till Death Do Us Bark is a humorous romp through ghostly letters, "The Ghastly Times," and the many limericks written by the deceased Noah Breth. The names will keep you laughing ..... librarian, M. Balm, attorney, Rita O'Bitt ..... the limericks will keep you guessing .....
There's nothing on earth I deplore Like fighting over money - oh bore! So mine now jingles, Whene'er it mingles. Now do you know what to look for?
..... and the wisdom of the deceased will warm your heart .........
Well, you learn your lesson. You make a small change. Then you try again the next day. It sounds simple, I know. But it's a grand arrangement you have there when you're living.
Another solid entry in the series from the always popular Klise sisters. Great ghostly fun in Ghastly!
Hopefully, Kate Klise can continue to engineer contrivances that require the inhabitants of 43 Cemetery Road to communicate via letters despite living in the same house.
Got to Cornwall about 4:30 am (I slept for an hour or so in the car, then read a script). Dropped off by car and driver at hotel. Glad to see someone up and about to check me in. Take my bags to front desk, tip driver handsomely. Driver drives away. Night-porter slowly establishes that I'm not actually staying in that hotel, but another several miles away, and that driver was a bit overenthusiastic in dropping me off at hotel. Also that you can't get a taxi in rural Cornwall at five in the morning so I am stuck there. I sit in the lobby and write Batman. Somehow, in my jet-lagged state, this all seems quite normal.
My cellphones do not work in this town, and they are out of charge to boot.
After three quarters of an hour the night porter turns up and takes me to a hotel room, magicked into existence just for me, and everything is suddenly wonderful. I sleep for six hours, have a long bath and then go down to see my friends who are having a joint 50th birthday.
I eat the best Cornish pasty I've ever had for breakfast, and wash it down with cider (the alcoholic sort that doesn't taste even faintly alcoholic, so be wary) and listen to the seagulls and am happy. Also run into several old friends, which is good.
Am now in the hotel office, as my room doesn't quite reach the internet.
Lots of people have written in to ask about the Bela Fleck recording of the Danse Macabre that he did for The Graveyard Book.
(It was the musical piece that preceded Bill Hader's lovely "Vincent Price", for those of you who were at any of the readings.) It's on the audio book of The Graveyard Book --the one you'd buy at iTunes or on CD.
Some people asked about the cellist playing with him; others wanted to know if it would be available as a separate download. According to Mr Fleck: The cellist is Ben Sollee, a great young player from Louisville.
There are no plans to do anything else with it at my end, because it's Bela's music and he recorded it, and if anyone's going to put it up for download or something I think it ought to be him, not me. Bela Fleck's website is http://www.belafleck.com/. (I love this blog. I sigh that it would be lovely to have a Danse Macabre on banjo, and the best banjo player in the known universe reads it, writes in to ask if I'd be interested, and then records it and it's even better than it was my head when I suggested it. I mean, honestly, how cool is that?)
Here's the magical audio widget, for any of you who would like to hear some of it...
In most states, the deadline to register to vote by mail has just passed (see http://www.eac.gov/voter/docs/state-reg-deadlines.xls/attachment_download/file) but it's yet to come in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho* (mail-in today!), Iowa*, Kansas, Maine*, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota*, Nebraska, Nevada (mail-in has passed but you can still walk in and register), New Hampshire*, New Jersey, New York (today!), North Carolina (mail-in today or at one-stop stations until Nov 1), Oklahoma (mail-in today!), Oregon, South Dakota, Utah (walk-in), Vermont, Washington (walk-in), West Virginia, Wisconsin*, and Guam.
*in starred states you can also register on election day, if you miss the mail-in deadline, which is also true for Montana and Wyoming, whose mail-in deadline has passed. North Dakota does not have voter registration, according to that reference, so I guess North Dakotans just walk in and vote.
Please consider helping the votor registration effort with such a post on your blog.
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on 9/14/2015
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on 5/8/2015
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on 12/8/2010
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