Tommy Sherman sent me the following observations via email, and gave me permission to share them with you:
Several years ago an old widower I knew of died leaving a very extensive and historic gun collection to his only child, a daughter. She had a 13-year-old-son that understood the value of the guns and that some of them were family hand me downs. Despite frantic begging by the grandson to keep the collection, the daughter was having none of it. She unloaded the whole lot for pennies on the dollar to the first one who could write her a check. She then quickly spent it on "Stalin's baubles" (hats & shoes).
Most wills are not worth the paper they are written on. Several years ago a friend at church died and his widow called me to come look at his guns and see if I wanted to buy them. He had less than 10 as I remember. She mentioned that in his will he had detailed out to which relatives he wanted each gun to
Most wills are not worth the paper they are written on. Several years ago a friend at church died and his widow called me to come look at his guns and see if I wanted to buy them. He had less than 10 as I remember. She mentioned that in his will he had detailed out to which relatives he wanted each gun to go to, but that she wasn't going to honor his request and was just going to sell them. I told her she needed to honor the request of the man she loved and lived with for all those years and then I left. I never did hear what she finally did, and who would be willing to contest a widow unless it was a big lot of items? In all probability none of his family knew what was in his will. If at all possible one needs to get things where they want them before one expires. The ones that involve their family members in shooting & self defense don't seem to have near the inheritance problems in general.He then sent me this:
After thought: The old widower should have known what his daughter would probably do. What he should have done is set up a trust for the grandson with a disinterested third party as trustee and a copy to the trustee with a pre-arranged contract already in place. When setting up wills you need to imagine everything bad that could possibly happen. Parents all too often don't see their children the way they really are.Now I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but that seems like good advice.