Legacy MattersIt's rare to read in the news about a family that does the right thing and avoids all litigation
Heath Ledger's family give his millions to his two-year-old daughter
Every penny of Heath Ledger's fortune will go to his daughter, Matilda Rose, the dead star's father has revealed.
In Ledger's will, which has been probated behind closed doors at the Australian Supreme Court in Perth, the 28-year-old actor left everything to his parents and three sisters. But the will was signed by the actor on April 12, 2003 - two years before Matilda was born
It was expected that Ledger's former partner, Michelle Williams, would lodge a claim on the will on behalf of their daughter. But Ledger's father, Kim, instead told Australia's Herald Sun that the family had decided to give everything to Matilda.
THE day will come, or may have already, when your children think of your money as theirs.
Learning to Share
Putting off discussion and then springing an unwelcome surprise in a will can poison the reservoir of family joy that parents want to bequeath to the next generation, resurrecting or exacerbating sibling rivalries, especially in blended families created through divorce or remarriage after the death of a spouse.
Succession is a natural progression, as old as the concept of private property, yet many parents never bother to tell their children about plans for their estate.
David Cay Johnston in the New York Times lays out the costs of not telling your children about uneven shares in your will.
Mitchell Gans, a law professor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., who has helped develop some of the most complex estate plans in the country, recommends that in such cases you should prepare the will and then notify “the kids that you are cutting out — or who are getting less than the others.”
“If you have the courage to do that,” Professor Gans said, “you cut down significantly the chance of litigation after death.”
He signed up as an organ donor when he was a cardinal.
Pope Benedict carries organ donor card as "an act of love'.
Pope Benedict XVI is a card-carrying organ donor, it emerged today. The disclosure that the pontiff is prepared to donate organs for transplants after his death follows a front page article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, calling into question the concept of brain death as the end of life rather than cardio-circulatory arrest.
__
The modern Catechism of the Catholic Church
"Donation of organs after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a manifestation of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or those who legitimately speak for him have not given their explicit consent."
Body shop founder Anita Roddick gave away her fortune to charity and the tax man and left nothing to her daughters.
She described leaving money to your family as "obscene" and cut her two daughters Sam and Justine out of her will in 2005 soon after making a fortune from the sale of The Body Shop.
French cosmetics firm L'Oreal paid £625million for the company, paying Dame Anita and her husband Gordon more than £100million for their 18 per cent share in the business.
Her half of the profit from the eco-friendly, ethical business which she and her husband built up from one shop was donated to the Roddick Foundation, which supports charity causes she espoused.
--
Mr Roddick and his family were yesterday away on holiday but the couple's daughters have publicly supported their mother's decision to disinherit them.
Remember husband and father still has half the fortune.
In January Father Brian Gallagher was visiting the Kowalczyk family Arizona in January when he fell and broke his arm. What the doctors also found when they treated him was a stage IV brain tumor.
A so-called friend saw the opportunity for money to made if only she kept control of him.
Custody Battle Threatens Health and Life of Aging Priest
A terminally ill Roman Catholic priest is the center of a tempestuous legal battle between a court-appointed temporary guardian - who has demanded his return to an Arizona care center - and family and friends - who believe such a move could kill him.
--
Documents obtained by LifeSiteNews.com show that Kowalczyk seized emergency legal guardianship of Fr. Gallagher shortly after learning that the priest, dissatisfied with her unwillingness to return him to California, relieved her of her power of attorney and reassigned any health-care directive and legal control over his finances to his cousin James Logsdon.
--
The priest also expressed his wish to return to San Juan Capistrano or live in a religious institute, "so that I may be with the Blessed Sacrament daily as well as receive the sacraments daily till the end of my days."
--
"When Fr. Gallagher was moved [from Arizona to California] he was very happy, smiling from ear to ear, saying 'I'm home now, even though I'm in the hospital, I'm in California now,'" said Denise Riggio, a long-time friend of Fr. Gallagher's who visited him earlier this week. "He is in a comfortable room, being monitored, has an IV, and is open to all visitors. The change was from bad to wonderful."
Know those organ stickers you put on your driver's license?
Now there's one for you can affix to the same license that expresses your desire to become an intellectual property donor.
Using such a sticker will not comply with the laws of any state, if any survivor wishes to challenge it, so I expect legal contests in the future.
via Kottke
Her obituary here
Her will here
Her bequest here
The four very big ones (nearly quadruple the giving of any other American last year) will go to the Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust.
Among good causes and works it supports are: Greenwich Hospital, the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, and the Alzheimer's Association. She also gave $5m to the families of New York firefighters in the wake of 9/11.
The year's other big givers are Baron Hilton of hotels fame – $1.2bn; George Soros, the financial wizard – $474.6m; and Michael Bloomberg, the media magnate and residing mayor of New York – $205m.
And so Leona will go down to posterity in rather better odour than she lived, ever demandingly, among us. She was hard, tyrannical to staff (she once made a waiter in one of her hotels beg on his knees for his job after serving a cup of tea with a smidgen of water in the saucer), and petulantly fired one man when she discovered he was gay. But, in the years to come, thousands of Americans will owe their lives to the medical facilities her billions will provide. Why, the woman's very nearly a saint.
When someone dies without leaving a will, their family can be split apart in acrimony. When a king doesn't leave a will, a country can.
When King Pakubuwono XII died four years ago, he left six mistresses with 35 children, but no wife, no heir and no instructions about the succession here in this city in central Java.
He might have guessed what would happen. Two half brothers each claimed the ancient crown, and the family split into two bitterly feuding factions.
--
Shortly after their father died, on June 12, 2004, each contending brother had himself crowned King Pakubuwono XIII. One coronation was held inside the palace, one outside, at the mansion of a friend.
When the time came to commemorate their father’s death, palace insiders say, the princes carried out separate tomb-sealing rituals: two teams of masons, two teams mixing cement, two solemn ceremonies.
In a Sultanate Known as Solo, One Too Many Kings.
A doctor who works at Columbia Presbyterian scammed his 92-year-old mother out of nearly $1 million.
Minnie Motz, the mother who worked her whole life as a librarian never thought her Jewish doctor son would leave her virtually penniless and on the brink of eviction.
Son-Burned
Dr. Robin Motz, an internist took control of his mother's finances in 2003 because she was failing physically.
In 2004, when her husband, Lloyd Motz, died, Robin Motz moved his mother's investments from her Oppenheimer account to a Merrill Lynch account in his name, prosecutors said. He liquidated the investments, which had been in tax-free municipal bonds, and began writing checks to cover his credit-card bills, the Manhattan DA's Office charged.
He's now under indictment and faces 15 years in jail.
A woman with a West-Indian accent who picked up the phone at Minnie Motz's apartment would only say, "How would you feel? That's exactly how she feels!"
A longstanding convention has kept royal wills secret, but Queen Elizabeth codified that convention into law when she had the wills of Princess Margaret and her mother sealed in secret.
Only the appearance of Robert Brown who claims to be the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret and her one time lover Group Captain Peter Townsend brought the secret law to light.
Queen 'had her mother's will sealed in secret'
The 52-year-old accountant from Jersey was challenging the claim that "the privacy interests of the Royal family outweigh any public interest in unsealing royal wills," he said.
Mr Hinks said the executors of the royal wills were opposing the application because Mr Brown had no right to see them. "It is a fraudulent claim. It is a scandalous claim that he is the son of the sister of the sovereign without any factual basis," he said.
In England the plan is to take dead patients' organs without their consent to cover a shortfall in organ donations which leads to more than a 1000 people each year dying before they can receive life-saving transplants.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown supports a system of 'presumed consent' whereby a dead person's organs are automatically available unless they opted out earlier or family members object.
I predict it won't be long before there is similar pressure here for 'presumed consent.'
Details about the charges against Anthony Marshall, son of Brook Astor, are catnip for the tabloids.
DA's Kick in the Astor
He tried to appear stoic, but Brooke Astor's son had a difficult time keeping a stiff upper lip yesterday as he was arraigned on charges of swindling his Alzheimer's-stricken mother out of millions in cash, property and artwork.
Anthony Marshall had to wipe away tears when his wife, Charlene, ran into his arms in Manhattan Supreme Court, where he was about to be slammed with charges over his handling of his mother's affairs, including grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and conspiracy.
If convicted at trial of the top count, Marshall, 83, would face up to 25 years in prison and would likely die behind bars.
Brooke Astor's son and one of her former lawyers have been indicted on criminal charges.
The charges stem from their stewardship of her financial affairs and the handling of her will.
Prosecutors were believed to be investigating millions of dollars in cash, property and stocks that Mr. Marshall obtained over the years in his role as steward of his mother’s finances.
--
The district attorney’s office was also informed by Mrs. Astor’s court-appointed lawyer, who had retained a nationally known handwriting expert, that the signature on the third amendment, which was made in March 2004, was possibly forged
Over a year ago I wrote about Brooke Astor and Elder Abuse
It appears the brouhaha over the way she was treated and her money spent caught the attention not only of the press but also the prosecutor's office.
According to recent survey in England some of the most popular requests by people planning their funerals are
BURY me naked.
Put a mobile phone in the coffin.
Cremate me with my pet's ashes.
Bury me with my teeth in.
And do make sure I'm actually dead.
The most common request is to have a beloved pet cremated with them. Of course, the pet has to be dead before it can be cremated.
Seventeen years is too long to go without reviewing your will.
Siblings in noted Cape family clash over will.
When their mother made a will in 1990, no doubt she thought circumstances were quite different.
But in a painful split within the well-known clan, three of Thomas Cahir's sisters allege that the young man who followed faithfully in his father's political footsteps also deceived and improperly pressured his widowed mother, Edith, to write a will that left the family business, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, solely to him.
Said one lawyer disputes will continue to multiply as the assets held by older generations grow in value.
"It's unbelievably common. The ones that make it to court are just the tip of the iceberg."
Not all wills are dry, legal documents. Leona Helmsley solidified her reputation as the 'Queen of Mean' with hers.
With an estate valued at between 4 billion and 8 billion dollars, she left $12 million in trust for her dog, a white Maltese named Trouble, yet nothing to her 12 great grandchildren. To two of her grandsons, she left $5 million each and another $5 million in trust so long as they visited their father's grave once a year. To the other two of her grandchildren, she left nothing "for reasons that are known to them".
In her will, Leona asked her brother to care for the dog, but her brother doesn't want anything to do with the pooch who's more trouble than it's worth.
Other Wills of the Rich and Vengeful
Meanwhile, the reputed greatest American playwright of the 20th century, Arthur Miller whose most line "Attention must be paid" in Death of the Salesman pointed to the intrinsic value of every human life abandoned his own son at birth.
Daniel was born with Down's syndrome and was almost immediately institutionalized. It's speculated that such a son did not fit into the successful narrative Miller wanted for his life who never mentioned him again.
Daniel's mother, Inge Morath, visited him every Sunday. By all accounts, Daniel has overcome his challenges spectacularly, competing in the Special Olympics and now lives independently, much loved and admired by those who know him.
Miller's son-in-law Daniel Day-Lewis, the actor who played a disabled person in My Left Foot apparently was appalled at Miller's treatment of his son. Together with his wife Rebecca Miller, they must have had some influence. Six weeks before his death, Miller made a new will leaving his son Daniel a share in his estate equal to his siblings. Attention paid and redemption of a sort, Miller gained with his will.
The Son who didn't fit into the plot of Arthur Miller's life
According to the latest survey on estate planning by Martindale Hubbell, the percentage of people without a will remains the same, 55% while the number of Americans with living will or advance directives has increased to 41%
Among non-white adults, the lack of wills is even more pronounced. Only one in three African American adults (32 percent) and one in four Hispanic American adults (26 percent) have wills, compared to more than half (52 percent) of white American adults.
--
Additionally, two in five (38 percent) American adults report assigning a power of attorney for healthcare purposes, compared to 27 percent in 2004. A power of attorney for healthcare legally delegates authority to another to make medical decisions for that individual, if he or she is incapacitated.
One in ten say they don't have any elements of an estate plan because they don't want to think about dying or becoming incapacitated.
Nearly one in ten say they don't know who to talk to about creating such documents.
And one in four say they don't have an estate plan because they have insufficient assets.
"When you die and you don't have any relatives, they just kick you to the side," Fouty said. "And now she's frozen. That just makes me cringe. That's not what she wanted at all. I'm just scared to death they're going to cremate her and stick her in a cemetery where she doesn't know anyone."
Deceased woman's last wish can't be granted.
Williams-Martin did not have the proper paperwork or the relatives to claim her, so her body could not be donated to science. Now, Fouty hopes her ashes can be placed on her father's grave, but first a relative must come forward.
People living alone need wills too.
Can you adopt someone older than you are? Olive Watson did.
A lesbian, she 'adopted' her partner Patricia Spado in Maine where they summered. Their 14 year relationship ended in 1992 but the adoption didn't.
At stake now is her share as a "grandchild" of Thomas Watson, who set up trusts for his grandchildren. He never knew of the adoption.
Also at issue is the validity of the adoption of a sexual partner.
Family of IBM Pioneer Seeks to Exclude Heir's Adopted Lesbian Lover from Inheritance.
The late philosopher Jacques Derrida was considered the father of deconstruction which, to greatly oversimplify, holds that the meaning of words depends on the assumptions of the people who wrote them. I find the theory impossible to understand, others have called it bewildering, but it has been exceptionally influential in this post-modern age because it questions the concept of universal truth and whether anyone can know anything for sure.
At the end of his career, Derrida was a professor at the University of California at Irvine, and signed an agreement in 1990 to donate his archives to them.
Shortly before his death, he threatened to pull the plug on his agreement because he didn't like the way the University was investigating a Russian studies professor who was accused of sexually harassing a graduate student. The professor was a vampire expert who taught a popular class on vampires and signed his e-mails with a colon to symbolize Dracula bite marks, used his position as the student's advisor to manipulate her into a series of sexual encounters...invited the woman to his apartment to view photos of Moscow.. plied the student with Transylvanian wine and opera music
So when Derrida's heirs didn't turn over the archives, the university sued his widow.
A Philosophical View of Sex from the LA Times is all about the contest between the widow and the university.
My second favorite line after "he signed his emails with a colon to symbolize Dracula bite marks" is a quotation from an unnamed blogger Given that Derrida's philosophical legacy is the notion that words have no meaning, shouldn't the bright minds at UC Irvine have realized that 'an agreement he signed' might not be worth much?"
I just googled the entire quote and found the John Miller, the national political reporter for the National Review said it. No wonder the LA Times didn't name him.
Donald Trump is eyeing N.J golf course for his grave site.
First though, he has to get approval to build a wedding chapel on the golf course he built on the former estate of the late automaker John DeLorean.
Then, he plans to convert it to a mausoleum for himself and his family.
I guess he plans to see his children married and hear wedding bells first.
Sadly, Anna Nicole Smith is not resting in peace.
There is a Tug of War over Anna's Body among her mother who wants to bury her, her putative husband Howard Stern and Larry Birkhead who per court order has a legal hold on her body until a DNA sample is forthcoming.
Not to mention the possibility that the father of her baby is her dead husband via his frozen sperm.
Or is it the bodyguard?
Here's a lovely reminiscence by Larry Miller
I liked her, and so did you, even if you didn't. No one in the public eye dies without making us stop and think. Shall we turn up our noses at her because she wasn't Katharine Hepburn? She did pretty well with what she was given, so let's not scoff because she wasn't a great poet or leader. Will I mourn more deeply, say, when the sad day comes and Jimmy Carter passes away? Less, I think.
Anna Nicole Smith, dead at 39 as reported by The New York Times
a former Playboy centerfold, actress and television personality who was famous, above all, for being famous, but also for being sporadically rich and chronically litigious, was found dead on Thursday in her suite at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla.
They also call her
obtrusively voluptuous and almost preternaturally blonde.
One of six children born to a single mother, Vickie Hogan dropped out of high school, married a chicken fry cook she met at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken in Mexia, Texas, gave birth to son Daniel and separated from his father, all before she was 20.
She left her son with her mother to seek her fortune as a topless dancer. With her extraordinary body and beauty, fortune she found.
She was on the cover of Playboy magazine as Playmate of the Year, took the name of Anne Nicole Smith when she signed a contract to model Guess Jeans. She became the most famous gold digger in America when married an 89-year-old oil tycoon J Howard Marshall. When her husband died 14 months later, her legal battles began.
J.Howard Marshall's estate was worth $1.4 billion.
There was no pre-nuptial agreement
Anna Nicole Smith battled Marshall's stepson Pierce for her share in the estate.
She filed for bankruptcy in 1999.
In 2000, she won a $474 million judgment in a California court that was thrown out by a Texas state court.
She appealed to a federal court, took her battle to the U.S. Supreme Court and won a unanimous decision that allowed her to continue her legal battle in federal court.
In 2006, Pierce Marshall died at 67. His widow continues the legal case in his place.
Anna Nicole gave birth in September, 2006 to a baby girl, and did not name the biological father.
Her son Daniel died 3 days later while visiting his mother and newborn sister in the hospital from a toxic combination of Zoloft, Lexapro and methadone.
Later that month, Anna Nicole and her lawyer Howard Stern exchanged commitment vows aboard a catamaran off the coast of the Bahamas. No marriage certificate was issued.
Howard Stern's name appears on the birth certificate issued in the Bahamas.
Her former boyfriend photojournalist Larry Birkhead claims he is the biological father and has filed suit to claim paternity.
Last Wednesday, a class action suit was filed against her and Trimspa for false and misleading marketing. She became the spokesman for the weight loss supplement after she lost 69 pounds.
The little baby, Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, is the sole heir-at-law.
Whoever is judged her father stands to control whatever the estate of Anna Nicole wins.
It will be a gargantuan battle of estate vs estate, that will take years to unravel. I expect it to be the mother of all estate battles saving Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce
Said Christopher Cline of the law firm Holland and Knight, who is an estate planning specialist,
he has never seen a case “with more moving parts.”
Outstanding questions include not only the paternity of her daughter, but if she died with a will and how her death will affect the lawsuit pending against the Marshall estate. It also wasn't clear where she legally lived when she died.
“It's a really large legal quagmire,” Cline said.
More in the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up department - her dead husband, over whose money everyone is fighting, was a former professor of trusts and estates at Yale Law School.
Update to more stuff you couldn't make up. The husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor said he had a 10 year long affair with Anna Nicole and could be the father of the baby girl. He with the title of Prince Frederick von Anhalt said Anna Nicole wanted to be a princess like Zsa Zsa. He offered to adopt her but Gabor wouldn't sign the papers!
Update 2 -comments from around the web.
many people were hard pressed to describe what exactly Anna Nicole Smith was. Actress? Model? Reality star? Rich widow? ''I don't know exactly what she did,'' said talk show host Joy Behar, hearing the news over the phone. And yet, trying to put her finger on why we watched this strange woman over the years, she came up with two things: Dysfunction. And beauty.
---
''With Anna Nicole, she was pathetic but at the same time you thought, 'Gosh, if I could just scoop you up and fix things, it would be OK,''' said Jerry Herron, a professor of American culture at Wayne State University. ''You wouldn't want to scoop up Paris Hilton.'''
Ann Althouse
Ah, yes. The classic two types of hyper-sexualized women -- the kind you think you can help, who just really need you, and the ones who seem ready to crush you if you came anywhere near. Anna Nicole is to Paris Hilton as Marilyn Monroe is to Madonna.
Update 3
Her body will be preserved for 10 days ordered the judge in the hearing today on the request by putative dad Larry Birkhead for an emergency DNA Test "so no one could switch the baby."
If you don't have any family, you could do what Luis da Camera did and pick names from the phone book.
Portuguese man left money in his will to 70 strangers
Luis da Camara made his will at the age of 29 by picking names out of the Lisbon telephone directory.
He had no family, reports the Mirror.
Luis died earlier this month, aged just 42, leaving two houses, a car and £17,000 in cash.
The 70 strangers will each get around £6,000.
One beneficiary Helena Suares, 76, said: "At first I thought it was a hoax, but I need the money and I am very grateful to him."
Jack Kerouac lived and wrote before my time, still when I finally read Dharma Bums. I was as entranced with the sweetness of the man as I was with his zest for life and search for truth, not to mention his sheer good looks.
Dharma Bums is an autobiographical novel, set in California, following the publication and amazing success of On the Road of which he said, "I wrote the book because we're all going to die."
Here's a video of Jack reading from On the Road.
But the best place to see that sweetness is in Steve Allen's interview of Jack on YouTube
via Boing Boing
Some of my favorite Kerouac quotes.
“All of life is a foreign country.”
“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.”
Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, estabilished-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road.
“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself”
His estate on his death in 1969 was worth $91. By 2004, it was worth an estimated $20 million.
Jack Boulware writes about the unbelievable complexities of his literary estate in The Kerouac Obssession
The legal situation surrounding the Kerouac estate is so mysterious and confusing as to be almost impenetrable. These, however, are the basic facts: When Jack Kerouac died, he left everything to his mother, Gabrielle. When she died, her will left her entire estate, including Jack Kerouac’s literary materials, to Stella Sampas, Jack’s third wife. In 1994, Kerouac’s only daughter, Jan, contended this will was a forgery, and filed an action in Florida, the state in which Gabrielle died, contesting the probate of her grandmother’s will. This is the action that Nicosia has championed, as an heir and literary representative of Jan Kerouac, even after her death.
--
Jan met her father for the first time in 1962, when her mother’s efforts to gain child support finally forced Kerouac to take a paternity blood test. (The result was positive.) As a 9-year-old, she nervously accompanied him to the liquor store for a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry, and saved the cork as a reminder that she did indeed have a father.
---
Johnny Depp's purchase invoice of Kerouac memorabilia
The Kerouac raincoat, $15,000; suitcase, $10,000; travel bag, $5,000; sweat shirt, $2,000; rain hat, $3,000; tweed coat, $10,000; a letter to fellow road-tripper Neal Cassady, $5,000; and a canceled check to a liquor store, $350.
The total is $50,640, including tax.
A big problem with inherited 401(k)s has just been solved with legislation signed yesterday by President Bush.
Heirs who aren't spouses can now roll over retirement accounts into their IRAs.
Wall St Journal Tax Report
Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the change will save taxpayers about $291 million over the next decade alone. But be careful: The new law is effective only for distributions made after the end of this year.
"In my 20 years of practice, I have seen dozens of families and tax advisers who would have benefited" from the new provision, says Robert S. Keebler, a certified public accountant at Virchow Krause & Co. in Green Bay, Wis. In most of those cases, a parent died, leaving retirement-plan money to a child who was forced, under the plan's rules, to withdraw money from the plan within five years -- and, in some cases, immediately, Mr. Keebler says in a new book from CCH, a Riverwoods, Ill., publisher of tax information.
The minefields of dividing an estate among different siblings.
"If you're not careful, it can cause people to be bitter for decades, it can ruin relationships," says Chris Dardaman, chief executive officer of Brightworth LLC, a financial advisory firm in Atlanta.
Tips on Dividing an Estate Among Half Siblings by Bridget O'Brian in the Wall Stree Journal
• Sit down with the entire family to discuss the estate plans. Each family needs to determine how specific to get on the topic of numbers, but at the very least such a confab can eliminate negative surprises. "You want, to the extent you can, to remove the emotional powder kegs," says Mr. Dardaman.
• Consider providing for each of your children -- from all marriages -- in your will. Such a move could eliminate or reduce the chance that one or more of the children would contest your will, says Mr. Nass. It's also helpful to write a side letter, or a note to your children, explaining why you've structured things the way you have and, perhaps, to assuage bruised feelings.
• You don't want bitterness between the families to turn into the adult kids fighting the widowed spouse, says Ms. Vasileff. Be sure the second spouse understands and is supportive of your plans.
• Consider an irrevocable insurance trust, a move that can help to avoid probate altogether.
When times change, it's time to review your will unlike the Frenchman, Albert Le Roy, a hardline Marxist, who left his money to his small village council "to prepare for communism."
It's quite split the small village who don't know what to do.
Village red-faced at butcher's late call to revolution.
From Happy Catholic comes this weekend joke.
An elderly gentleman had serious hearing problems for a number of years.
He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the gentleman to hear 100%.
The elderly gentleman went back in a month to the doctor and the doctor said, "Your hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again."
The gentleman replied, "Oh, I haven't told my family yet. I just sit around and listen to the conversations. I've changed my will three times!"
Funeria, an arts agency, is leading the emerging funerary arts movement.
Funeria offers a portfolio of some 70 designs, of hand-made, museum-quality, artist-made funerary vessels.
It's certainly time for more thought and beauty for the urns, vessels and reliquaries for cremated remains. As one wag said, "You've urned it!"
If you are an artist, you may be interested in their call for entries 2006 in the Ashes to Art collection.
The deadline is August 19, 2006. The Ashes to Art exhibition will be in Philadelphia in October.
Funeria, an arts agency, is leading the emerging funerary arts movement.
Funeria offers a portfolio of some 70 designs, of hand-made, museum-quality, artist-made funerary vessels.
It's certainly time for more thought and beauty for the urns, vessels and reliquaries for cremated remains. As one wag said, "You've urned it!"
If you are an artist, you may be interested in their call for entries 2006 in the Ashes to Art collection.
The deadline is August 19, 2006. The Ashes to Art exhibition will be in Philadelphia in October.
Leaving no written directions about how he wanted to be buried or who should have his ashes, Baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett left plenty of work for the lawyers for his children and his fiancee.
Helen Baxter in North Scituate, R.I. makes coffins that are not only beautiful, but can be used as furniture until the last day comes.
Her creations make an eternal impression.
Baxter points to the eye-grabber in the store, a tall lavender bookshelf with a delicate design of lilacs painted behind the single shelf. Around the sides of the recently-finished piece are tiny green willow leaves, and the strong arms of an oak tree wrap around the outside frame, as though protecting it. The only giveaway that this is an antique-style coffin, standing upright, is its hexagonal shape. The coffin lid, which Baxter says is usually stowed away while the coffin is being used as furniture, has birch tree branches painted on it. The woman who commissioned the coffin, she explains, is a perfectly healthy 61-year-old nurse named Helen Busby. ''She said she liked birches, oaks, and willows," Baxter says. ''When she's laid out it will be really beautiful."
My coffins are handcrafted and handpainted. Many people order them early in life so that they may serve more than their final intended purpose. My coffins are designed to be practical and beautiful in a home for years in advance of need, serving as blanket chests, window seats, coffee tables and more.
When a tragic, horrific death becomes a battle over money.
The first time he ever saw his daughter, she was laid out in a coffin.
But now, the biological father of Nixzmary Brown wants control of her estate - which could reap millions from lawsuits against the city.
The NY Post calls him a Body $natcher
First year medical students paid homage to those who had donated their bodies to science and education. Students thank cadavers for 'gift'
During the brief memorial service, humble observations and boundless gratitude spilled from students who'd learned much about the human body through six months of dissection.
--
Erica Moyer brushed away tears while she reflected on the sacrifice of the individual whose body was donated for her education.
"This was pretty intense for me. I'm pretty sensitive toward death anyway," the 24-year-old said. "I have a deep respect for these people that would do that."
Someone sent me this a while ago. With the Superbowl just over, it seems timely
Life Support
A man and his wife were sitting in the living room and he said to her,
"Just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."
His wife got up, turned off the football game, unplugged the TV and threw out all of his beer.
Charles Krauthammer pens a moving tribute to his brother in today's Washington Post.
Whenever I look at that picture, I know what we were thinking at the moment it was taken: It will forever be thus. Ever brothers. Ever young. Ever summer.
Sadly, it's never "forever thus" however timeless the moment.
What Ted Williams and Walt Disney have in common is the belief that they can be revived years after death when medicine has advanced sufficiently to cure whatever caused their deaths.
There are some 1000 people in the cryonics movement who have arranged to have their bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen until the time is right to thaw them out. Some 142 human bodies or heads are already so frozen.
I always thought it was nuts myself, but never more so than when I read in the Wall Street Journal that they are leaving their money to themselves! A Cold Calculus Leads Cryonauts to Put Assets on Ice.
With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated. Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the "richest man in the world."
---
At least a dozen wealthy American and foreign businessmen are testing unfamiliar legal territory by creating so-called personal revival trusts designed to allow them to reclaim their riches hundreds, or even thousands, of years into the future.
Such financial arrangements, which tie up money that might otherwise go to heirs or charities, are "more widespread than I originally thought," says A. Christopher Sega, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University and a trusts and estates attorney at Venable LLP, in Washington. Mr. Sega says he's created three revival trusts in the last year.
On Personal Revival Trusts
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, leaving money to yourself is nothing but nuts.
A rose amidst the ashes. A beautiful story of the family of a 13 year old Palestinian boy who had been shot dead by IDF soldiers who mistook his toy gun for a real one.
The parents decided to donate the organs "for the sake of peace between the two people". Ariel Sharon invited the father to meet with him and accept his apology and his gratitude.
Ahmed's heart has been transplanted into the body of a 12 year old girl.
Ahmed's liver was donated to a six month old baby and a 66 year old woman.
Ahmed's lungs will be donated to a 14 year old Cystic Fibrosis patient.
Ahmed's kidneys will be donated to a 5 year old boy and 4 girl.
An exceptional deed indeed and a Great Legacy. Many people are blessing Ahmed and his family today. You too will be blessed if you ...Donate Life. Hat Tip, Charles Johnson at LGF
ABC News reports that Peter Jenning left an estate worth over $50 million.
The New York Daily News got the first look at Peter Jenning's will which was filed Wednesday in the New York's Surrogate Court in Manhattan.
Jennings, 67, left the bulk of his estate in trust for his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23, from his marriage to writer Kati Marton, according to the will, filed Wednesday in Manhattan Surrogate's Court.
He left his Central Park West apartment to his widow, Kayce Freed, whom he wed in 1997, as well as a portion of his estate, as laid out in a prenuptial agreement the couple signed before their wedding.
Jennings, who died last month after battling lung cancer, reportedly earned as much as $10 million a year during part of his tenure at ABC. His will lists $50 million in personal property and $3.5 million in real property in New York.
Bob Dylan is looking to control his own legacy reports the Wall St. Journal. If Dylan's taking care to choose how he wants to be remembered, shouldn't you be thinking about the same thing?
With a torrent of new projects focusing on his most-revered period, from 1961 to 1966, the singer is pre-empting the posthumous image-massaging that has confronted many rock estates by dealing with his own legacy now, while the 64-year-old is still very much alive.
The DVD release today of the 3½-hour, Martin Scorsese-directed documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" is part of a multipronged project in which Mr. Dylan has aggressively focused attention on his transformation from baby-faced folk singer to rock 'n' roll icon.
------
In that way, Mr. Dylan is staking out unusual ground for a rock star. The process of picking through an artist's archives for clues about his or her creative evolution is often left to heirs and others after the musician's death. The estates of Jimi Hendrix, Mr. Cobain and Tupac Shakur all have made cottage industries of issuing rarities, album outtakes, obscure live recordings, and the like. But that process is often contentious, like the long legal battle among Mr. Hendrix's heirs, record labels and producers. The fights frequently lead to cheap repackagings of old material, designed more to make heirs a quick buck than to craft a lasting legacy.
Tom Peters reports in Nice! on an obituary he chanced upon in the Vineyard Gazette. The deceased was Stanley Murray and the guidance to mourners was as follows:
"In lieu of flowers, please buy some coffee for the person behind you in line at Dippin' Donuts or Espresso Love and tell them it's from Stan."
If you have a deep dark secret that implicates yourself or someone in your family as an accomplice in a murder, a secret that might solve a mystery that has puzzled the nation for years, then writing what you know down and sealing it in an envelope marked Do Not Open Until My Death is the way to go.
After 73 years, the mystery of what happened to Judge Crater, "the most missingest man in America" may be solved because one woman left such a letter in her safety deposit box.
From ABC News
On Aug. 6, 1930, Judge Joseph F. Crater stepped off a midtown Manhattan curb and into a cab after seeing a Broadway play with his showgirl girlfriend. He was never heard from again.
---
The possible break in the case came after the death a little more than two months ago of an elderly woman, whose name is being withheld by detectives at this time.
The woman's death prompted her family to open a safe-deposit box where they discovered a letter labeled "Do Not Open Until My Death." In the letter, the woman recounted her own father's deathbed statements to her, statements which, if true, could bring to a close one of the oldest enduring mysteries in America. And so far, detectives say, everything the woman wrote has been corroborated.
The letter contained the names of cab driver Frank Burn, and his brother, a police officer named Charles. The letter claimed that Frank Burn had killed Crater and buried the body under the boardwalk at New York's Coney Island. Charles Burn was named as the killer in another notorious homicide.
In England, the terminally ill can be starved to death. So ruled an appeal court in the U.K.
No longer must doctors follow a patient's wishes, even if clearly stated by a mentally competent patient who is terminally ill.
Doctors get the final say once a patient can no longer communicate. They can withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) if they consider it 'overly burdensome'.
I find this a very troubling ruling because it seems to draw the line between those worth feeding and those you can starve solely on their ability to communicate.
It's not our ability to communicate that's distinguishes humans from other species, but our consciousness.
Those who are in a "locked in" state are alert and wakeful even if they are paralyzed and unable to speak. One of them, Jean-Dominque Bauby, even wrote a book about it .
"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly : A Memoir of Life in Death"
A racehouse trainer, Neil Adam, won the Prix de l'Abbaye at Longchamp two years running. He built up a stud farm, Collin Stud, near Newmarket, which he left to his two daughters in 1997, one of whom is a qualified veterinarian.
By 2001, Neil Adam was paralysed with multiple sclerosis and could only communicate by nodding, winking and shaking his head. Still he made out a second will leaving the stud farm to its manager and head groom.
The two sisters succeeded in overturning their father's last will. The deputy High Court judge said,
"In my judgment, it is likely that there was a temporary poisoning of his natural affection for his daughters, or a perversion of his sense of right, the nature of which nobody can satisfactorily explain," said the judge.
He added that he realised his decision would be hard on Mr Sharp, 44, and Mr Bryson, 39, both of whom worked for Mr Adam since leaving school.
"There is every likelihood that the decision to benefit them resulted from rational thought, in which Mr Adam recognised his considerable debt of gratitude to them," said the judge.
"Nevertheless, I cannot conclude that the will as a whole was rationally made, or that Mr Adam's natural feelings for his daughters, or his sense of right, were unaffected by disorder of the mind."
The judge granted permission for the case to be appealed and said,
"I have been struck throughout the case by the great affection everyone had for Mr Adam and the extremely kind way in which everybody treated him. If that could result in some resolution of the issues between the parties, it might be a fitting tribute to him."
Good legal advice would have obviated this "awful business."
If you want your family to visit your grave, you have to pay them, or at least that's what Morris Gorski thought.
Gorski, a popular businessman who owned a number of properties, got permission before his death to have a cash machine installed in his tombstone at the Chester Jewish Cemetery.
Now when any one of his 25 heirs turn up at the gravestone, they can collect up to 750 pounds. No more than once a week though.
According to the Board of Guardians of British Jews, other people will be able to do the same if Gorski's incentive proves popular.
HT Hanan Levin
UPDATE: It took Richard, a commenter, to point out to me that the site I linked to is a "satire" site based on real life. Is my face ever red, taken in by a too-good-to-be true story.
His biographer Peter Manso said
I think the whole auction is creepy and I can tell you I'm not the only one who thinks so after spending two days with (Brando's son) Christian."
"The auction borders on complete tastelessness and Brando would never, ever, ever have wanted this," the author of "Brando: The Biography" told Reuters by telephone.
According to Manso, Brando left instructions that his bedroom be sealed with a padlock after his death.
"I can assure you Marlon is turning over in his grave to think that someone has his driver's license."
The sale of Brando's personal effects raised more than $2.4 million to be divided among his nine children.
In Australia, a widow can not impregnate herself with her dead husband's sperm without his written consent.
The 36-year-old woman had been married to her husband for more than eight years when he was killed in a car accident in July 1998.
Within 24 hours of his death, the woman, who can only be identified as AB, received permission from the Victorian Supreme Court - and the consent of the dead man's parents - to have his sperm taken and stored at a Melbourne hospital.
But yesterday, Justice Hargrave said the law did not allow the taking of sperm or ova from the dead for the purpose of reproduction if the person had not consented in writing to the procedure before their death.
In this case, the man, who was 29 when he died, had not given written consent for the posthumous removal and use of his sperm
Widow can't use husband's sperm
Yet another thing for young couples to think about before they visit their lawyer to make their wills. Probably a good idea for American couples as well.
A very even-handed fair look at the Case of Theresa Schiavo by Joan Didion, one of our greatest living writers, in the New York Review of Books.
HT Amy Welborn
In talking about end of life issues, there's one phrase you hear over and over, it's I don't want to be a burden.
Can someone who's a "burden" also serve, even give? Who measures the quality of life anyway? Mary Beth McCauley writes in the Christian Science Monitor on The issues beyond right-to-die.
This is surely the most loathed condition in our era of the fit, beautiful, and self-sufficient. Who could ever submit voluntarily to an existence that's all take and no give? And so it has evolved, almost without question, that we've embraced this "don't want to be a burden" idea as valid - that if you're potentially needy you want to make your exit posthaste.....
.....
But few who have gone the distance with serious illness would say that the experience didn't open them to a quality of relationship they never knew existed. Few haven't found themselves changed on the most basic level by the process, haven't become different - a better person, if you will - than they'd thought possible previously. And who, exactly, is the "giver" in such situations anyhow? Don't those who do the burdening themselves serve by allowing another the opportunity to give?
......
To expect anyone to embrace such a situation trivializes the excruciating pain that comes with lost dreams and intolerable demands. That said, people who've been there know well that the burdenhood model misrepresents a reality that often allows - if fleetingly - for physical and spiritual .
That debate shouldn't end privately, in the lawyer's office..... Do we continue in lock step behind the convenient premise that the sick are a burden?...
.... there is shortsightedness in expecting the healthcare industry to make end-of-life policy. Thus the need to press the debate. After all, most of us have seen too many modern-day Lazaruses, watched too many lives made great by impossible medical challenges, to believe that "protocol" should measure the quality of our lives, or, finally, dictate the number of our days
Because celebrity spokesmen often get into trouble, advertisers like dead people, especially the certainty they won't talk says Truman Taylor.
That's why Marilyn Monroe earned $7 million last year, Elvis earned $40 million. Even Einstein pulled in $1 million last year, appearing in ads for Apple computers, Fuji film and Chrysler cars.
Happy heirs.
People are finally coming to realize that they have "digital assets" and they are real assets, something of value and valuable for many reasons. So just what happens to your digital assets when you die or if you become incapacitated?
What do you want done with your blog?
Who knows how to get to your photos posted on the Kodak Gallery or Flickr?
Do you want your family to read your email?
Do you have address books that are only available online?
What are the usernames and passwords to your online accounts?
Do you have any files that exist only online with a third party?
Do you have work files on your computer that should be returned to your employer?
Who gets to go through your computer and clean out any files you don't want anyone to see like a porn collection?
Who gets your iPod and the music on it?
These issues are attracting increasing attention. The Christian Science Monitor asks Who Gets to see the email of the deceased? Darren Barefoot wonders if it isn't time for Digital Morticians . Joel Schoenmeyer, a Chicago area estate planning lawyer writes about the need for a Technology Inventory as does law professor Gerry Beyer. Darren Rowse in Problogger wonders what would happen to his blog which happens to be an income-producing asset in Blogging Fears - Death.
Just where should you put all those bits and pieces about your digital assets and your online life? Is it your will?
Your will is not the only way or the document with which you can direct how you want things to be done after your death. There are a lot of things that you want someone to know and a will is not necessarily the best place to tell him or her. After all, a will is a public document. And you certainly don't want to go to your attorney to add a new codicil every time you change a user name or password to an online account.
There is a vehicle, too little used, called “Letter to your Executor”. It's the ultimate in do-it-yourself. Since it is only a letter and not a will, it is not legally binding, but it is morally binding. And it’s just the place to leave directions of how you want certain things handled after your death. I call it the “Gift of Good Directions,” a fine complement to the Gift of Good Records, your master list of what and where everything is and who to contact.
A digression here, to talk about the third in this trio- the Gift of a Lifetime, your Personal Legacy Archives. Few of us will have biographers, all of us are archivists of our own lives. Lost among the ephemera, files and shoeboxes filled with photos we all have are the stories and the meaning. What were the top ten highlights of your life? What did you love and why? Where were the "choice-points" in your life, where you could have gone either way, but chose one? And how did it turn out? What do you regret? What are your proudest achievements? What's your favorite music, the moments you'll never forget? What do you want your children to know about you? What have you left unsaid that you want said?
While there are few Mount Rushmore lives, Joseph Cooper says, each of us carves out a bit of history that should be put down for our own edification and for our families and friends. For his son, he's set down his own Monuments to a Decent Life. Ronni Bennett calls them Stories for the Infinite Future. As one who spent much of her professional life with celebrities, she says with great authority, No Lives Are Ordinary.
Time was when people kept journals and wrote letters They were just like bloggers. Take Henry Thoreau. Or Samuel Pepys. Some, like Mark Twain, kept scrapbooks. Others were just ordinary people, like these emigrants and pioneers, or these diarists in Britain during World War II.
Ordinary letters to a new grandson written in 1918 are a precious family heirloom 90 years later. Such journals and letters preserve personal and family memories as well as the sense of times gone by by people long gone, but not forgotten. Some rise to become societal memories. We can understand better what things were like for the Jews during World War II because we've read the Diary of Anne Frank.
Human nature is constant, it doesn't change over time. We experience the same emotions love and fear, gratitude and shame, as people did a thousand years ago. It's only the people, the details and the stories that change. But those details and those stories are what we want to pass on into the future. It's what you want your loved ones to know. It's what they want to know. Only we no longer keep journals or write many letters.
That's why many of us write blogs - to keep a record of where we were and what we thought. The more we write, the more valuable the blog becomes and not just for its "long tail". Some bloggers show us the way of suffering with illness and facing death and they are Truly Noble and their work deserves to be preserved. For most of us, we'd like our families or friends to have our blog after we're gone; we don't want our blog to just disappear into the ether. The world will go on after you die, but not your blog unless someone pays the hosting fees. You are the one that can decide whether your blog will have an afterlife. Thinking ahead, Ronni Bennett has set aside money to pay for her blog host for at least a year and to download her blog to CDs for whoever wants a copy.
Details like what you want done about your blog and your other digital assets are the sort of directions you leave in your Letter to your Executor. With a Letter to your Executor, you can update it and revise it as often as you want. Just be sure to date it so it doesn't get confused with earlier letters. I recommend printing it out as well to file with your other important papers. Copies of all important papers should be kept in a steel box so that it can be grabbed in a moment if you must leave your house in an emergency. The steel should protect your files against fires and you may want to get one with a key so you can keep it locked and safe from prying eyes.
Because it's so easily revised and costs nothing to revise, your Letter to your Executor is also the ideal document for other directions that may change on a fairly frequent basis, like the music you want played at your funeral or what you want engraved on your tombstone, how to take care of your pets, or the small sentimental gifts you want distributed to friends.
Once you get into it, you realize there's a whole lot of context that doesn't and will never appear in the legal documents of your estate plan.
Everyone should have a will, a durable power of attorney, and a health care proxy or power of attorney first, but once that's done, spend some time to think about the context, those details that express who you are.
Once you've formalized who you want as guardians for your children, what do you want them to pay particular attention to. Helen Harcombe was dying of cancer, so she composed a detailed mommy manual to tell her husband things he wouldn't think about in raising their seven year old daughter alone. No will is ever going to contain the phrase, "Bath and hair every other night, AT LEAST. No child of mine to be smelly." For her husband, it was "great comfort." Her daughter Ffion said when she saw the manual, "That makes me feel a lot better, Daddy."
Any guardian, any child will be happier if they knew what you wanted them to do and pay special attention to. A letter to the guardians of your children will be invaluable guidance. Now this may seem a whole lot of trouble to write directions for something that will likely never happen. So think of it as an on-going letter about what you want for your children and what you think is important at different stages in their lives. It could be a letter you write each year on their birthdays or on Mother's Day. That way, you are creating something valuable for them after you're gone, something they'll treasure as part of your personal legacy, the gift of who you are. Such a letter becomes a chronological record of how you saw your children as they grew up. What grist for the mill when they start therapy or have children of their own!
Directions are important too for your health care agent. So write a letter to your health care agent describing how you would like to be taken care of should you fall ill and be unable to communicate.
(If you haven't executed a health care proxy, otherwise known as a power of attorney for health care, and of course you know you should, you haven't faced the grid many lawyers will present you of the almost limitless health care decisions your health care agent could be asked to make.)
A living will is almost useless because it can't anticipate the circumstances or the complicated decisions that will have to be made in your future. That's why choosing one person you trust to act in your stead is Better than a Living Will.
More important for your comfort and quality of life are the directions you leave for your health care agent. There's a lot of room between "doing everything" and "doing nothing."
What you consider a "quality of life" you want to hold on to is quite likely is not the same as someone else's. But if you don't give your health care agent a clue as to what you want or just how far you want to go, you are just making it harder for them. Again, you will never find such guidance in a legal document. Mystic Knight wrote his directions the night before he faced an operation. I've done mine in Living the Way Terri Was and my health care agent says she definitely wants my playlist. You will not find playlists in legal documents.
I expect to change my mind about these things almost as often as I redecorate, not a constant pre-occupation, but a periodic one. So will you. Think of your estate plan as the architecture. The furnishings, the little details you want to add or subtract or update will change periodically, but they don't require an architect or a builder - or a lawyer. They just require your keeping a Letter to Your Executor - changing it as often as you want - in a safe place.
Here's a wonderful example of how good directions can make a great legacy.
Even while she lay dying from breast cancer in Wales, Helen Harcombe left instructions to her husband from raising her seven year old daughter, Ffion.
Here's some of Helen's to do list for her husband.
• Uniform bought every September. Check hair for nits regularly.
• Bath and hair every other night, AT LEAST. No child of mine to be smelly.
• Make sure you serve food with veg/peas. Get fruit down her. Don't let her live out of cans, noodles and toast etc.
• At Christmas time don't forget the smaller things like stocking fillers to make it look more and fill up the stocking - chocolates, bobbles, clips, make up, fun stuff etc.
• Bedding should be changed once a fortnight, more if sweaty.
• Flowers to me at least Mothers' Day, my birthday, Ffion's birthday, our anniversary, Christmas etc (in between would be nice!)
• Keep in touch witFi's godparents and my friends and especially Mam and Dad or ... I'll haunt you!
"It did bring a smile to a lot of people's faces and the pointers I am sure will be with us forever probably."
Ms Raybould said it was also important to have left something for Ffion. "It does show that even though her mother was going through a difficult illness, that the focus was on the family and on her," she said.
Jill Templeman, a family support team leader for Marie Curie Cancer Care in Wales, said the list was "a lovely and invaluable thing. We do encourage and try to support families to be open and prepare for death in lots of different ways with memory boxes and photo projects."
Cancer specialist Baroness Ilora Finlay, professor of palliative medicine and vice dean in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University, said Mrs Harcombe had left "a tremendous legacy".
"Helen died tragically young, leaving a young daughter and I really hope for her daughter that that list and that letter will become indeed more treasured with time," she said.
We may be burying our best medical lessons by not doing enough autopsies writes David Dobbs in Buried Answers in the New York Times magazine.
Autopsy is the most powerful tool in medicine, responsible for most of our knowledge of anatomy and disease says Alan Schiller, chairman of pathology at Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Neglecting the autopsy is anathema to the whole practice of medicine.
In the 1960s, almost 50% of all deaths were autopsied, today the number is less than 5%. Dr. George Lundberg, a pathologist who edits the online medical journal Medscape says nothing can reveal error like an autopsy and by revealing mistakes, help doctors learn and advance the cause of medicine.
Only an autopsy can reveal whether a patient died of Alzheimer's, or multi-infarct dementia or encephalitis or even a variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob prion killing disease. What a patient really died of has enormous significance for their survivors. The real cause of death can reveal what the surviving family can take preventative action against. In many cases, an autopsy can provide the family with a "welcome sense of resolution.... ease anguish about things done or not done"
Reliance on diagnostic tools before death like CAT scans and MRI's instead of autopsies only buries the real answers.
One of my own family doctors told me that he rarely asks for an autopsy because ''with M.R.I.'s and CAT scans and everything else, we usually know why they died.''
This sense of omniscience, Lundberg says, is part of ''a vast cultural delusion.'' At his most incensed, Lundberg says he feels that his fellow doctors simply don't want to face their own fallibility. But Lundberg's indictment is even broader. The autopsy's decline reflects not just individual arrogance, but also the general state of health care: the increasing distance and unease between doctors and patients and their families, a pervasive fear of lawsuits, our denial of age and death and, especially, our credulous infatuation with technology. Our doctors' overconfidence, less bigheaded than blithe, is part of the medicine we've come to expect.
So there's one more thing you can do for your family - insist on an autopsy as part of your last wishes. You'll be advancing the cause of medicine at the same time.
Attorney Rita Marker clarifies many misconceptions about living wills and the traps for the unwary in Be Prepared.
The most protective and the most flexible type of advance directive is the "Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care." With this type of document you designate someone else to make health-care decisions on your behalf if you are ever temporarily or permanently unable to make those decisions for yourself. The person you name is usually called an agent, although some states call this individual a health-care proxy, health-care representative or health-care surrogate.
When you are able to make your own decisions, it is the responsibility of your health-care providers to let your know your diagnosis, to give you information about possible treatments, as well as the risks and benefits associated with those treatments. Then, it is up to you to give or withhold consent based on that information. If you have named an agent to make decisions for you that person stands in your shoes. The doctor gives your agent the same information that would have been given to you and then, based on prior discussions you and your agent have had and with the knowledge of your values, your agent gives or withholds consent for treatment.
You can, but need not, name a family member as your agent. In addition to selecting an agent who agrees with you, it is important that that person has the ability to be assertive when necessary. He should be a person who will be open to receiving necessary information and who will not be intimidated by a physician or ethics committee who may hold different views. .
Because the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care is a legal document, it is important that you have one that is carefully drafted. It is not necessary, advisable, or even possible to write everything down about your wishes. There is no way you can envision every possible condition, treatment, or situation you could face at any time. The most important thing is to maintain communication with your agent about your wishes as they change from time to time. (Sometimes what we want now may be different than what we wanted five years ago.)
Joan Kennedy is not very pleased with her children who became her legal guardians last year to see that she received treatment for alcoholism and to take care of her financial affairs. In retaliation, she put up for sale her summer house on Squaw Island for $6.5 million. Her children object to the sale and it is unlikely the house will be sold given the cloud on the title.
The battle of children to retain control over one or another parent or elderly relative is on the rise with no end in sight. Half the guardianship cases heard in Barnstable Family and Probate Court were filed by family or friends seeking control over another adult's life according to the Cape Cod Times.
The most difficult cases where the prospective ward contests the proposed guardianship usually involve substance abuse - drugs or alcohol. I have nothing but sympathy for these families dealing with such difficult issues; however, I can not help but believe that advance planning in the form of a durable power of attorney would have saved these families a lot of grief.
Those of us who are worried about the rush to euthanize now have the case of Mae Magouirk to show us how right we were to worry.
Another woman, 81, lies in a hospice without food or water since March 28. Another family dispute - this time between Mae's granddaughter and Mae's brother and sister. Brother and sister want a temporary feeding tube inserted and Mae evaluated for treatment at the University of Alabama Medical Center. Granddaughter, Gaddy, has been appointed emergency guardian and has stated.
"Grandmama is old and I think it is time she went home to Jesus. She has glaucoma and now this heart problem, and who would want to live with disabilities like these?
At a follow-up hearing in Troup County Probate Court, a settlement has been reached that allows awards guardianship to the granddaughter Gaddy provided three cardiologists evaluate the patient who would receive whatever treatment two of the three recommended.
Mae has a living will that states nourishment is to be withheld only if she were in a coma or vegetative state with no hope of recovery. Apparently, she did not have a health care proxy
Is this woman is being denied food and water even as the evaluation is going on? I don't know. Her granddaughter testified according to the local paper linked above that she feeds her grandmother Jello and chips of ice.
Is this case part of the hurry up and die syndrome? I don't know but I will follow it. I'm afraid we'll see many more of these cases, some genuinely a dispute over what the patient wanted, others with far more base motives. I don't think "quality of life" is the standard. None of us know with appreciation we can live even if from the outside the "quality" seems poor or what we would endure for just a little more life. I am reminded of the Zen strawberry story
One day while walking through the wilderness