← The Probate Archive
— Collection · 79 cases
Probates of note
Some estate fights end with a family settlement. These ended with a rule that binds every court after them — two trips to the Supreme Court, a tax valuation that reset an entire industry, a fee award that told Florida trustees what their work is worth.
The will in the couch· 9-min readStill open
Aretha Franklin
The Queen of Soul was thought to have died without a will. Then her niece found three of them — one in a locked cabinet, one wedged under the sofa cushions. A Michigan jury took less than an hour to pick the couch.
Two trips to the Supreme Court· 10-min readFlorida
Anna Nicole Smith
A fourteen-month marriage to an 89-year-old oil billionaire produced nineteen years of litigation, two United States Supreme Court opinions that first-year law students still read, and — in the end — nothing at all.
Two co-trustees, one Margaritaville· 8-min readStill openFlorida
Jimmy Buffett
He left $275 million in a trust for his widow and named her to run it alongside his longtime financial adviser. Neither can act without the other, neither can remove the other, and as of 2026 they are still in court in Palm Beach County.
The $24.6 million fee· 8-min readFlorida
Robert Rauschenberg
Three friends administered an artist's trust on Captiva Island and asked for $60 million. His own foundation said $375,000. A Lee County judge said $24.6 million — and Florida's appellate court affirmed, in the case that still governs what a trustee's work is worth here.
No will, six years, half to a stranger· 9-min read
Prince
He controlled his masters, his name, and every frame of video shot at Paisley Park. He did not leave a will. Six years later a judge signed off on a settlement handing half of it to a music-rights company he never met.
The Mormon Will· 9-min read
Howard Hughes
One of the richest men on earth died without a will. Roughly forty of them then appeared — including a handwritten one, left on a desk at church headquarters, giving a Utah gas-station owner $156 million for a ride he said he gave a stranger in the desert.
The residuary clause that left the family forever· 8-min read
Marilyn Monroe
She left three quarters of everything to her acting coach, outright, with no one named after him. He outlived her by twenty years. When he died it passed to his third wife — a woman Monroe never met — who turned it into a fifty-million-dollar brand.
The best-timed death in American tax history· 7-min readFlorida
George Steinbrenner
For exactly one year — 2010 — the federal estate tax did not exist. The Yankees owner died in Tampa on July 13th of that year, with a fortune reported above a billion dollars, and his heirs paid nothing.
The Great Stork Derby· 8-min read
Charles Vance Millar
A Toronto lawyer with no family left his fortune to whichever woman in the city gave birth to the most children in the ten years after his death. He meant it as a joke about human greed. Then the Depression arrived and it stopped being funny.
The conviction that unhappened, and then happened again· 10-min read
Aaron Hernandez
For 673 days, an old common-law doctrine meant that a man who died before his appeal was heard had, in the eyes of the law, never been convicted at all. In 2019 Massachusetts abolished the rule and put the conviction back on the record.
The lawyer who never made a will· 8-min read
Abraham Lincoln
He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836 and practised for a quarter century. He drafted wills for his clients. When he was assassinated in 1865 he left none of his own, and a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court spent two and a half years sorting it out for free.
The $30 million he could not keep· 9-min readFlorida
Abraham Shakespeare
A Lakeland truck driver's assistant won a $30 million Florida Lotto jackpot in 2006 and took $17 million in cash. Within three years the money was gone, his house was titled to someone else's company, and he was dead. The estate spent four more years getting the house back for his two sons.
Who can consent for the dead· 9-min read
Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc.
A man died in a bicycle accident with no will and an email account his brother said he had opened for him. Eleven years later the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court answered the question the whole field had been stuck on: a personal representative can give lawful consent on behalf of a decedent.
The $2 form that cost a fortune· 9-min readFlorida
Aldrich v. Basile
Ann Aldrich wrote her own will on an E-Z Legal Form and listed every asset she owned. Then she inherited more. Because the form had no line for a residuary clause, the new property went to two nieces she had never named — and the Florida Supreme Court said that was correct.
The trust that ran Florida· 10-min readFlorida
Alfred I. duPont & Ed Ball
Alfred I. du Pont died outside Jacksonville in 1935 and left almost everything to a trust for crippled children. His brother-in-law ran it for the next 46 years — a bank chain, a railroad, a paper company, half the Panhandle — until Congress amended the banking laws to make him choose.
The will that created the prizes· 8-min read
Alfred Nobel
Nobel wrote his own will in four handwritten pages, left 94% of his fortune to an organisation that did not exist, and named no country as his home. It took five years, a family lawsuit, and an executor moving securities out of France to make it work.
The twins born eighteen months late· 9-min readFlorida
Astrue v. Capato
Robert Capato banked sperm before chemotherapy and died in Florida in 2002. His widow gave birth to twins in September 2003. The Supreme Court held 9–0 that whether they were his “children” for Social Security purposes depended on Florida's intestacy statute — and Florida's answer was no.
Peak earnings at 26, peak risk at 26· 10-min read
Athletes and the short window
A professional athlete compresses a lifetime of income into a handful of years, at an age when almost nobody writes a will, with a body that gets hurt for a living. Then, for some of them, the earnings continue after death — and that is a separate problem.
The two-hundred-year experiment· 8-min read
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin left £1,000 each to Boston and Philadelphia with instructions to lend it to young tradesmen at 5% and let it compound for two centuries. The cities did roughly that. The money came out in 1990, and Boston still had to litigate who got it.
The estate as a demolition site· 10-min readStill open
Bernie Madoff
Bernie Madoff's criminal case took 199 days from arrest to a 150-year sentence. The civil unwinding is still running eighteen years later — $15.485 billion recovered, and estates on both sides of it: one that paid $7.2 billion, one that was left with $1.75 million of $18.6 million.
The son went to prison· 10-min read
Brooke Astor
Nearly every case in this archive ends in a settlement, because civil courts divide money and rarely assign blame. This one ended differently. A Manhattan jury convicted her only son of looting her estate, an appellate court affirmed, and at 89 he reported to state prison.
The judgment outlives the defendant· 10-min readFlorida
Claims against the estate
In Florida, no cause of action dies with the person. What kills most claims against a dead defendant is not a defence — it is a calendar. Three months from a newspaper notice, and an absolute two years from the date of death that nobody can extend.
A membership, a policy, and a trust· 9-min readFlorida
Cryonics contracts
Cryonics is not a bequest and it is not a burial. It is a contract signed while you are alive, funded by a life insurance policy that names the organisation as beneficiary, with the long-term costs held in a separate trust. The legal problems are all in the paperwork.
As near as possible· 10-min readFlorida
Cy pres
You leave money to a charity that no longer exists, or on a condition nobody can meet. The gift does not simply evaporate — a court can redirect it to the nearest charitable purpose you would have wanted. Florida codified that power in §736.0413, and its courts have used it on a wildlife society that never existed and on Janet Reno's homestead.
Thirty-three photographs· 9-min readFlorida
Dale Earnhardt
He died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Within six weeks his widow had gone to a Volusia County courtroom, then to the Florida Legislature, and Florida had a new public-records law with his family's name on it. It still governs every death in the state.
798 paintings, three weeks· 10-min read
Estate of Mark Rothko
Three weeks after Mark Rothko's will was admitted to probate, his executors handed all 798 of his paintings to the gallery two of them were connected to. The Surrogate removed every one of them and made them pay what the paintings were worth by the time of trial, not what they sold for.
The crime that happens inside the family· 9-min readFlorida
Exploitation of the elderly
Florida wrote a separate felony for taking an older person's money from a position of trust. It is graded by dollar value, it reaches the power of attorney and the joint account, and it comes with a reporting duty that lands on bankers and nurses before it ever reaches a prosecutor.
The trap and the shield· 10-min readFlorida
Florida homestead
No dollar cap. No forced sale. The most generous homestead protection in the country — and a constitutional restriction that can quietly void the single most important gift in your will. Three Florida appellate decisions show exactly how the same clause does both jobs.
When the government claims the inheritance· 10-min readFlorida
Forfeiture and the estate
A forfeiture is not a creditor's claim. It is an assertion that the property was never lawfully the decedent's — with title dating back to the day of the offence, not the day of the seizure. It runs on its own clock, in its own court, and an estate that ignores it loses by default.
Burn everything, unread· 10-min read
Franz Kafka's papers
Kafka left written instructions that his friend Max Brod destroy every manuscript, diary and letter without reading them. Brod published all of it. Ninety-two years later the Supreme Court of Israel decided who owned the pile — and the question underneath is one Florida answers every week.
What survives the marriage· 10-min readFlorida
Frozen embryo disputes
Cryopreservation created a category of property, or person, or neither, that outlasts the relationship that made it. Three decisions — Tennessee 1992, New York 1998, Alabama 2024 — answer the question three different ways. Florida answered it by statute in 1993.
Twenty-nine pages, no lawyer, no witnesses· 9-min read
George Washington
He wrote it himself over the summer of 1799 — twenty-nine pages in his own hand, on paper bearing his own watermark, and he said so in the document: no professional character had been consulted. It is one of the most studied wills in American history. Florida would not admit a page of it.
The man who died with the passwords· 9-min read
Gerald Cotten / QuadrigaCX
Canada's largest crypto exchange told 115,000 customers that roughly C$250 million was locked in cold wallets only its dead founder could open. Investigators opened the wallets anyway. They had been empty since April 2018.
The test is the relationship, not the recipient· 10-min readFlorida
Gifts to religious organisations
A relative discovers that most of an estate went to a congregation. The instinct is to argue about the organisation. Florida courts do not. They ask three questions about relationship, benefit, and procurement — and the answers would be identical if the recipient were a university, a caregiver, or a nephew.
A stranger has been researching your family· 9-min read
Heir hunters
An industry exists to find the relatives of people who died without a will, prove the relationship in court, and take a percentage. It has made ordinary people rich, produced a British television series, and — in Salt Lake City in 2019 — produced two guilty pleas under the Sherman Act.
The estate that did not know what it held· 9-min readStill open
Henrietta Lacks
Cells taken during her cancer treatment in 1951 became the first human cell line that would not die. They are in laboratories on every continent. Her family found out twenty-two years later, and the question of what — if anything — her estate owns is still being litigated.
The case that made inheritance property· 9-min read
Hodel v. Irving
Congress decided that fractional interests in Indian land worth a few dollars would simply stop passing to heirs. The Supreme Court held that taking away the right to leave something to your family is itself a taking — the first time the Court said so.
The seven warning signals· 9-min readFlorida
In re Estate of Carpenter
A Florida widow signed a will four days before she died, leaving everything to the daughter who had arranged it and nothing to her three sons. The Supreme Court of Florida used the case to write the list of warning signs that every Florida will contest has been argued around ever since.
Fifteen years to fund a scholarship· 10-min read
James Brown
He signed a will. It said his money should educate poor children in South Carolina and Georgia. It took a state attorney general, two removed trustees, more than a dozen lawsuits, and two trips to the South Carolina Supreme Court before a single scholarship was paid.
The case that ate the estate· 8-min read
Jarndyce and Jarndyce
Dickens invented a probate suit so long that the heirs grew old inside it, and ended it in the only way it could end: the lawyers' costs consumed the entire fortune. He based it on real cases. One of them ran for sixty-two years.
The will signed two days before· 12-min readStill openFlorida
Jeffrey Epstein
The criminal case ended the moment he died. The civil claims did not, and there was no defendant left except an estate. What followed was years of probate in the US Virgin Islands, a compensation program built inside it, and $121 million paid to 136 claimants.
An NFL team, and no cash· 9-min readFlorida
Joe Robbie
He founded the Miami Dolphins and built the first entirely privately financed stadium in America. He died owning almost all of both and almost nothing liquid. Within four years the family had sold the team, the stadium, and the name on the building.
A California trust in a French country· 10-min read
Johnny Hallyday
The biggest rock star France ever produced signed a trust under California law leaving everything to his widow and their two daughters. France reserves three-quarters of an estate for the children. The question was which country he actually lived in.
What is a name worth the day it dies· 10-min readStill open
Michael Jackson
He left a will, a trust, and two executors — the planning most estates never get. It still took twelve years, because the IRS said his name and likeness were worth $161 million and the estate had reported $2,105. The Tax Court split the difference at $4.15 million.
You do not own your tissue· 8-min read
Moore v. Regents
John Moore's spleen was removed at UCLA in 1976. His cells became a patented cell line worth commercial licences. In 1990 the California Supreme Court told him he had never owned them — but that his doctor should have told him what the surgery was also for.
Ancestors who belong to no estate· 10-min read
NAGPRA and repatriation
Probate answers who inherits a person's property. It has never answered who is responsible for a person's remains when the death was centuries ago and the descendants are a nation rather than a family. In 1990 Congress wrote a separate statute for that, and it is still being worked through.
The will that was a forgery· 10-min read
Nina Wang
She spent a decade in court proving that a will benefiting somebody else was forged. She won. Then she died, and a one-page document appeared leaving her multi-billion-dollar estate to her feng shui consultant — and Hong Kong's courts spent six more years deciding it was forged too.
The will that made a statute· 9-min read
Peter Thellusson
Thellusson died in 1797 directing his fortune to accumulate through the lives of every son and grandson living at his death. Projections ran to £14 million. Parliament passed a law to stop anyone doing it again, and by the time the last heir was identified in 1859 the costs had eaten the growth.
Who owns what a president wrote· 10-min read
Presidential papers
For nearly two centuries a president's papers were his personal property, to keep, sell, seal, or burn. A widow with a furnace, a son with a safe, and one former president with 3,700 hours of tape changed that — and it took an Act of Congress and $18 million to finish the argument.
The guardianship scandal· 10-min readFlorida
Rebecca Fierle
She held the largest professional guardianship practice in Florida — more than 400 wards across 19 counties. One ward's death in a Tampa hospital in 2019 unwound all of it, and produced a statewide investigation, a criminal case, and a rewrite of Chapter 744.
The plan that predated the money· 9-min read
Sam Walton
In 1953 a variety-store operator in Arkansas put everything he had into a family partnership and gave his four children 20% each. Nine years later he opened the first Wal-Mart. By the time he died the fortune was measured in tens of billions — and most of it had never been his to tax.
The death nobody mentioned· 9-min readFlorida
Schilling v. Herrera
Mignonne Schilling died in Miami in August 2004. Her brother — the sole beneficiary of her 1996 will — was not told until December 6, four days after her caregiver had petitioned to close the probate. By then there was nothing to contest. So he sued in tort instead, and Florida's Third District let him.
Five minutes is enough· 9-min readFlorida
Simultaneous death
Two people die in the same accident and nobody can prove who went first. Most states solved this by requiring an heir to outlive the decedent by 120 hours. Florida did not. Here, surviving by five provable minutes moves an entire estate into somebody else's family.
Selling the story· 9-min readFlorida
Son of Sam laws
New York wrote its law the day after David Berkowitz was arrested, and the Supreme Court struck it down fourteen years later — not because compensating victims is illegitimate, but because a statute that taxes speech by its subject reaches Thoreau and Saint Augustine too. Florida's version, from the same year, is still in the statute book.
Thirty-two years, and no standing· 9-min read
Stieg Larsson
He died months before the first book was published. His partner of thirty-two years found a will in a drawer that turned out to be worthless, and Swedish law gave the whole Millennium trilogy to a father and a brother. The best cautionary tale in the archive for anyone who never married.
The money was never the problem· 10-min readFlorida
Sudden wealth collapse
A study of Florida Lottery winners found that a six-figure prize postponed bankruptcy rather than preventing it. A peer-reviewed study of NFL draftees found one in six filed within twelve years of retirement. The pattern is not carelessness. It is four missing structures.
The one decision your family cannot reverse· 9-min readFlorida
The Anatomical Gift Act
Almost everything you write down about your death is advisory. A Florida anatomical gift is not. Once the donor has made it, the statute says a family member, guardian, or health care surrogate may not modify, deny, or prevent it — and after death it is irrevocable.
Every painting where he left it· 10-min read
The Barnes Foundation
Albert Barnes wrote a 1922 indenture fixing his collection in place forever: no loans, no touring shows, no colour reproductions, no rearranging a single wall. He died in 1951. In December 2004 a Pennsylvania judge let the whole collection move to Philadelphia — and it is still the most argued-about donor-intent decision in America.
A promise to give, after you are gone· 9-min readFlorida
The charitable pledge
You sign a pledge card for $100,000. You die having paid $20,000. Can the charity collect the rest from your estate? In New York, Cardozo said yes on facts thinner than these. In Florida, the Supreme Court said no — and set out exactly what a pledge must contain to survive.
Who keeps the building· 10-min readStill openFlorida
The church split
A congregation divides. Both halves claim the sanctuary, the parking lot, and the endowment. The US Supreme Court has told states they may resolve this two different ways — and in April 2026 a Florida appellate court held that Florida still uses the older one, then asked the Florida Supreme Court whether it should.
What you own, what you only borrowed· 10-min read
The digital assets inventory
A Florida personal representative must file a verified inventory listing estate property with its fair market value. Half of what a modern person calls “my accounts” is not property at all. Telling the two apart is the job.
Standing, and who actually gets it· 9-min readFlorida
The disappointed charity
A grandchild left out of a trust often cannot get into court at all. A charity named in the same document usually can. The reason is a definition in Florida's trust code — and behind it stands an Attorney General with statutory power to sue on behalf of gifts nobody else is watching.
Chapter 740, and the three-tier rule· 10-min readFlorida
The Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act
Florida wrote down exactly how a personal representative, trustee, or agent gets lawful access to a dead or incapacitated person's email, photos, and accounts. It is one short chapter, it has been law since 2016, and almost nobody uses the ten-minute step that sits at the top of it.
What a company is worth on the day nobody can run it· 10-min readFlorida
The founder with no successor
The owner dies. The estate tax is due in nine months, in cash. The personal representative has four months of statutory authority to keep the business trading. The buyer knows all of this. This is the most common six-figure mistake in Florida estate planning, and it is entirely preventable.
A promise is not an instrument· 10-min readStill open
The Giving Pledge
Since 2010, more than 250 billionaires have publicly promised to give away most of their wealth. The pledge is explicitly not a contract, and fifteen years of data show most signatories are considerably richer than when they signed. This is what the paperwork behind a philanthropic estate plan actually does.
An asset with no lock and no locksmith· 10-min read
The lost bitcoin problem
Somewhere between 1.5 and 3.7 million bitcoin appear to be permanently inaccessible. There is no bank to call, no court order that helps, and one man in Wales spent a decade and a High Court judgment trying to dig his out of a landfill.
Twenty-nine years is a long time to stay alive· 9-min readFlorida
The lottery annuity after death
Take the annuity and the state owes you thirty payments over twenty-nine years. Die in year six and the remaining twenty-four are an asset of your estate — taxable at their present value, non-assignable without a judge, and paid on a schedule nobody can accelerate.
You cannot pay them, and you cannot skip them· 9-min readFlorida
The missing heir
A brother nobody has spoken to since 1994. A cousin last known to be in Ontario. A named beneficiary who simply cannot be found. A Florida personal representative may not distribute their share to anyone else, and may not close the estate without them. There is a procedure, and it is four steps long.
Eight votes, one heir· 10-min read
The Murdoch Family Trust
A divorce settlement in 1999 locked four children into equal control of a media empire, and made the trust irrevocable. Twenty-four years later the settlor asked a Nevada court for permission to change it. The commissioner said no, in ninety-six pages, using the word “charade.”
Five years, or one specific peril· 9-min readFlorida
The presumption of death
Probate needs a dead person. When there is no body, no death certificate and no explanation, Florida supplies one by presumption: five continuous years of unexplained absence after a diligent search. Exposure to a specific peril can cut the five years to nothing.
Thirty envelopes in a safe· 9-min read
The sealed royal wills
In England a proved will is a public document anyone can buy a copy of. Except for one family. Since 1910 the wills of senior royals have been sealed by court order, and in 2021 a judge sealed Prince Philip's for ninety years after a hearing nobody was told about.
An award, in exchange for the right to sue· 9-min readStill open
The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund
Congress created it eleven days after the attacks. It paid $7.049 billion to 5,560 claimants, and roughly 97% of eligible families took it rather than sue. Every award for a person who died had to pass through a probate court first — and it still does.
A killer inherits nothing· 9-min readFlorida
The slayer rule
It began with a sixteen-year-old who poisoned his grandfather to stop him changing his will, and a New York court that refused to let the statute produce that result. Florida now writes it down: §732.802. It reaches wills, intestacy, joint property, and life insurance — and it does not require a criminal conviction.
Where the dog lives· 10-min readFlorida
The snowbird domicile fight
You can move to Florida and still owe New York. Domicile and residency are two different tests, states apply both, and auditors decide the first one by asking where you keep the things you would grab in a fire — the photographs, the jewellery, the dog. One Illinois couple fought a $1.8 million assessment over a fourteen-day difference and won.
When nobody comes forward· 9-min readFlorida
The unclaimed body
Florida has a written answer for what happens when a person dies and no one claims them. It runs through a hierarchy that ends with the words “or a friend or other person,” a medical examiner, an anatomical board, and — if all of that fails — a county commission.
Two billion dollars nobody has asked for· 9-min readFlorida
The unclaimed estate
Florida runs two entirely separate systems for money without an owner, and they have opposite deadlines. Escheated estate proceeds are gone after ten years. Unclaimed property is claimable forever. Almost nobody knows which one holds their money.
The estate that ran on Post-it notes· 10-min readStill open
Tony Hsieh
The Zappos founder died at 46 with no will and a fortune reported at roughly $840 million. Creditors came forward with about $130 million in claims — one of them written on a sticky note. Five years later a document nobody had seen arrived at the courthouse in the mail.
The notice nobody reads· 8-min read
Tulsa Professional Collection Services v. Pope
For a century, estates cut off their creditors by running a legal notice in the classifieds. In 1988 the Supreme Court held that this is not due process for a creditor you already know about — and rewrote the first month of every probate in America.
The second-best bed· 8-min read
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare left his wife of thirty-four years one item: the second-best bed. Four centuries of readers have taken that as a parting insult. The period law of dower, and the going price of a bed in 1616, suggest they have it backwards.
— Other collections
These are not our cases. Everything on this page is drawn from published court records and news reporting, cited below. It is general information about how probate and trust law works — not legal advice, and not a prediction about any case. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Other states' law differs from Florida's, which is usually the whole point of the story.