28/09/2017

That people can do some pretty odd  things in their Wills is demonstrated by these famous examples:

William Shakespeare, who in his Will left his wife his “second best” bed:

William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper billionaire, who died leaving behind five sons but in his Will said that anyone who could prove “that he or she is a child of mine [receive] the sum of one dollar. I hereby declare that any such asserted claim … would be utterly false”;

and finally

a Mr. Zink, who was a lawyer in America who died in 1930, and made a Will that left $50,000 in trust for 75 years, by which time he hoped it would have grown to $3 million, in order to create “The Zink Womanless Library”. In his Will he directed that the words “No Women Admitted” were to mark all the entrances to the library and that no books, works of art or decorations by women were to be permitted in the library. “My intense hatred of women,” he explained in the will, “is not of recent origin or development nor based upon any personal differences I ever had with them but is the result of my experiences with women, observations of them, and study of all literatures and philosophical works.” Not surprisingly his family were able to successfully challenge the will.