← The Probate Archive
— How it went wrong · 43 cases
Blended families
A second marriage plus a document nobody updated is the single most reliable way to produce litigation. Florida protects a surviving spouse more forcefully than most states — and protects adult children not at all.
— The Florida law this runs into
The elective share: 30% of the elective estate, whatever the will says.
The elective estate reaches revocable trusts, POD accounts, and joint property.
Waiver by written contract — the prenup that actually works.
Pretermitted spouse: marry after the will and take an intestate share.
Pretermitted child — and why an intentional omission is different.
— Where it happened
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 greatest hitter, frozen in Arizona· 8-min readFlorida
Ted Williams
His will said cremate him and scatter the ashes off the Florida coast. Two days after he died in Florida, his son had the body flown to a cryonics facility in Arizona — on the strength of a note scrawled on a scrap of paper. The family went to war over it for two years.
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 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.
Poor little rich girl· 9-min read
Barbara Hutton
She inherited a Woolworth fortune at twelve, took control of it outright at twenty-one, and married seven times. Almost nothing about her spending was illegal or even unusual for her class. What is instructive is the structure: a trust that protected her until her twenty-first birthday and then simply stopped.
The will she signed two years after the book· 8-min read
Bette Davis
Her daughter published a memoir in 1985. In 1987 she signed a will naming both daughters and both grandsons as intentionally omitted, and split everything between her son and her assistant. Nobody contested it. The order of those events is the whole legal story.
The contract that outran the will· 8-min readFlorida
Blechman v. Estate of Blechman
Bertram Blechman amended his revocable trust to leave his partner half the income from a family LLC. He had signed an operating agreement four years earlier saying his interest would vest in his children the moment he died. Florida's Fourth District held the contract got there first — and that the interest was never an estate asset at all.
The novelist who wrote his own last chapter, and lost· 9-min read
Charles Dickens
He directed a plain funeral, no public announcement, and — emphatically — no monument of any kind. Five days after he died his friends had him buried in Westminster Abbey and the grave left open for the public. The clause that did hold was the one giving all his private papers to his sister-in-law.
Ninety-five percent to one son· 9-min read
Cornelius Vanderbilt
The Commodore died in 1877 leaving the largest fortune in America — and left roughly ninety-five percent of it to a single son. Three of his other children went to court alleging insanity, spiritualists, and undue influence, and New York read the transcript over breakfast for more than a year.
The letter that was only a wish· 9-min read
Diana, Princess of Wales
She signed a will, and the next day a letter of wishes: her jewellery and three quarters of her possessions to her sons, one quarter divided among her seventeen godchildren. Four months after she died, the executors obtained a court order changing it. Nobody outside the process knew for years.
Fourteen years, three jurisdictions, one will nobody could find· 9-min read
Errol Flynn
He died in 1959 leaving a 1954 will, an ex-wife who said there was a 1957 one, a bank he had not paid, a tax authority that wanted its share, and real property in three countries. The estate stayed in probate for about fourteen years. One beneficiary was declared dead in 1984.
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.
Seven days short of ninety· 9-min readStill open
Gene Hackman
Two people died in the same house within about a week of each other in February 2025. Her will said her husband had to outlive her by 90 days. He outlived her by roughly seven. That gap, and not a single word of either document, decided where the money went.
The will that was two years out of date· 8-min read
Heath Ledger
He signed his will in April 2003. His daughter was born in October 2005. The document never mentioned her, and under the law that governed it, it did not have to. His family handed her the entire estate anyway — which is the rare happy ending in this archive, and the one you should never plan on.
The law written for one marriage· 9-min readFlorida
Henry Flagler
Flagler built Standard Oil with Rockefeller, then built Florida — the railway, Palm Beach, Miami, Key West. In 1901 the Florida legislature made incurable insanity a ground for divorce. He was the only person ever divorced under it. It was repealed in 1905.
The trust that outlived everyone, and the name that kept working· 9-min read
Humphrey Bogart
He died in 1957 leaving a trust for his wife and two small children. It was still being administered when Lauren Bacall died fifty-seven years later. By then the family's real asset was not the money — it was the surname, licensed more than a hundred times and defended in federal court against a sofa.
Thirty-nine days· 10-min read
J. Seward Johnson Sr.
The Johnson & Johnson heir signed a will leaving essentially everything to his third wife — a Polish immigrant who had entered the household as domestic staff — and died five and a half weeks later at 87. His six children spent fifteen weeks in a Manhattan courtroom trying to undo it.
The will that sold the team· 9-min read
Jack Kent Cooke
He left the Washington football club and its brand-new stadium to his own charitable foundation, with instructions to sell. Two years later the franchise went to a 34-year-old outsider for $800 million — then the most expensive transaction in sports. The widow he cut out of the will sued and reportedly took $20 million.
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.
Disinheritance, done correctly· 8-min read
Jerry Lewis
His will excluded all six sons from his first marriage — by full legal name, together with their descendants, in a single sentence with no reason attached. Five years later he died and nobody contested it. This is what the well-drafted version of a hard decision looks like.
“For reasons which are well known to them”· 8-min read
Joan Crawford
She adopted four children and left two of them nothing, in eleven words that gave no reason and started a two-year fight. The disinherited pair objected to probate on capacity and undue influence. The estate paid $55,000 to make it stop.
For as long as she does not remarry· 9-min read
John Jacob Astor IV
The richest man on the Titanic left a pregnant teenage widow the income from a five-million-dollar trust and the use of two great houses — on one condition. She remarried four years later and gave all of it up. The terms are constantly misreported, and the law behind them surprises people.
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.
The daughter the trust had never heard of· 9-min read
Kobe Bryant
He signed the last amendment to his family trust in 2017. His fourth daughter was born in 2019. When he died in January 2020, the document that held the family's money named three children — and the trustees had to go to court to add the fourth.
The page that only reached the leftovers· 8-min readStill open
Larry King
Two months after filing for divorce, he wrote a page by hand replacing the will that named his wife as executor. It became a two-year fight — over roughly two million dollars, while the assets that actually mattered sat quietly in trusts the page could not touch.
The business succession that worked, and the box that did not· 9-min read
Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz
They built a studio together, divorced, and then did the one thing most co-founders never manage: one bought the other out, cleanly, at a price. By the time either of them died there was no company left to argue about. The argument that did happen was over love letters and a Rolls-Royce.
He sold his name before he died· 9-min read
Muhammad Ali
In 2006 Ali sold 80% of the marketing rights to his own name and likeness for $50 million. When he died ten years later, the most valuable thing he had ever owned was not in his estate — and when a broadcaster used his image the following year, the plaintiff was a brand-management company.
The will that was read out loud· 9-min readStill open
Nelson Mandela
Two months after he died, three judges sat in a room in Johannesburg and read his will aloud to the family. It was careful, specific, and provided for staff, schools, and the party. Twelve years later the courts are still working through what he left behind.
Forty-five thousand works, no will· 10-min read
Pablo Picasso
The most prolific artist of the twentieth century left no instructions at all. It took six years, a court-appointed administrator, a five-year inventory, and a change in French law about who counts as a child to work out who owned what.
The word nobody defined· 9-min read
Robin Williams
He did everything right: a funded trust, a prenuptial agreement, two homes carefully allocated. Then his widow and his three children spent a year in a San Francisco courtroom arguing over what the word “memorabilia” means, across a list of roughly 1,200 objects.
When the claim is about the life, not the will· 9-min read
Rock Hudson
His estate poured into a trust written in 1974, and none of it was ever public. What was public was the lawsuit: a claim against the estate for what he did while he was alive. A jury awarded $21.75 million. A judge cut it to $5.5 million, and it stood.
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.
The congressman with no will· 8-min read
Sonny Bono
He was a member of the United States House of Representatives, 62 years old, with four children by three women and a catalogue of hit records. He died on a ski slope in January 1998 without a will — and nine months later Congress named the law that would keep his copyrights earning for another twenty years after him.
The estate with no file· 8-min read
Steve Jobs
He died in 2011 holding a reported $7 billion. There is no probate docket, no inventory, no will contest, and no public accounting of who got what. The only trace the plan left in the public record is a single SEC form filed seven weeks later.
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.
Separated is not divorced· 8-min read
Sylvia Plath
Plath and Ted Hughes separated in October 1962. She died the following February with no will, still legally his wife — so he inherited everything, including her copyrights and her journals. He edited the poems, published the diaries, and destroyed the last volume. Intestacy decided fifty years of literary history.
Four sons, twenty years· 9-min read
The Koch brothers
Fred Koch left his company to four sons. Two of them spent the next two decades suing the other two over what it was worth. Their mother wrote a clause into her own will disinheriting any son still litigating six weeks after her death — and a Kansas court enforced it.
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.”
Two notes nobody could read· 9-min read
Thomas Kinkade
Against a formal will, three codicils and a trust, his girlfriend produced two handwritten pages dated a month apart. They gave her the house and $10 million. The handwriting was close to illegible. His estranged wife — never divorced — was on the other side.
Two words, two years· 9-min read
Tom Petty
His trust said his widow and his two daughters should “participate equally” in managing the catalogue. Nobody wrote down what that meant. It cost a $5 million lawsuit, a shelved Wildflowers anniversary edition, and two years of a Los Angeles docket to find out.
A homicide with no defendant· 8-min readStill open
Urooj Khan
He won $1 million on a Chicago scratch-off in June 2012. The Illinois Lottery cut the cheque on July 19. He died the next day, and the death was first recorded as natural causes. Six months later the medical examiner reclassified it as cyanide poisoning — a homicide. No one has ever been charged.
A will older than her daughter· 9-min read
Whitney Houston
She signed her will on February 3, 1993. Her daughter was born on March 4, 1993. Nineteen years and a divorce later, the document was still the one that governed — and it still described Bobby Brown as “my husband.”
— The other ways it goes wrong
Died without a willHandwritten willsCapacity & undue influenceTrustee & fee warsPetsStrange conditionsRemains & final wishesTaxes & timing
Every case on this page is somebody else's. If any of it sounds like your situation, the fix is almost always cheaper and duller than the case was.
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.