← The Probate Archive
— How it went wrong · 100 cases
Trustee & fee wars
A trustee holds someone else's money and then decides what it was worth to do so. Several of the largest sums in this archive were fought over not by families but by fiduciaries — and Florida has its own controlling rule on what their work is worth.
— The Florida law this runs into
Trustee compensation: reasonable under the circumstances, and adjustable by the court.
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation v. Grutman, 198 So. 3d 685 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016)
The West Coast Hospital factors govern, not the attorney-fee lodestar.
Removal — including for co-trustee non-cooperation that substantially impairs administration.
Duty to inform and account to qualified beneficiaries.
The contrast: personal representatives do have a presumptive percentage schedule.
— 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 $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.
Two wills, six weeks apart· 9-min read
Huguette Clark
A copper heiress worth $300 million spent the last twenty years of her life in a hospital room by choice, while her mansions sat empty and staffed. Then she signed two wills six weeks apart that said opposite things — and nineteen relatives who had never met her went to court.
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 $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.
The estate that was built before the death· 9-min read
Agatha Christie
Her personal estate probated at about £106,000, which tells you nothing. Twenty-one years before she died she put the rights into a company, and along the way she handed individual works to individual relatives outright. Fifty years on it is still trading, and still in the family.
$2.8 million, and none of it hers· 8-min read
Aimee Semple McPherson
The most famous preacher in America died in 1944 with a personal estate of about $10,000. The organisation she founded was valued at $2.8 million. Her son took over the day she died — not by inheritance, but because the corporate bylaws said so.
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 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 consent forms were forged· 8-min read
Alistair Cooke
He broadcast Letter from America for 58 years and died in New York in 2004. A year later the family learned that a tissue-recovery company had taken bone from his body before cremation, on paperwork nobody had signed. Its principal went to prison for 18 to 54 years.
Two percent of an unknowable number· 9-min read
Andy Warhol
Warhol left almost everything to a foundation. The executor hired a lawyer on a percentage of the estate — then the two sides came to court with valuations hundreds of millions apart, because the fee depended on the answer. Nine years, two appeals, and one bankruptcy later, the lawyer owed the estate money.
The estate that worked· 8-min readFlorida
Arnold Palmer
In the twelve months after he died, Arnold Palmer's estate earned about $40 million — roughly what he had earned in his last year alive. Thirty-nine licensees, a drink most Americans think is a beverage rather than a man, and no public estate fight at all. This archive is mostly failures. This is the other kind.
The name he could not leave to anyone· 8-min read
Babe Ruth
He died in 1948 having built the most valuable name in American sport. Forty-two years later his two daughters sued a publisher for using his photograph and lost outright — New York gave the dead no right of publicity at all. In 2024 one of his shirts sold for $24.12 million.
The gift with three keys· 8-min readFlorida
Bebe Rebozo
Richard Nixon's closest friend left roughly 65% of his estate — about $19 million — to the Nixon Library, on the condition that the spending be approved by Nixon's two daughters and one other friend. The money sat for four years while the approvers disagreed, and a Miami judge finally ordered them into a room together.
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.
$6 million sold for $2.25 million· 8-min read
Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
A Home Depot shelf-stocker won $31 million on Lotto Texas in 1997 and took it as 25 annual payments of about $1.24 million. Less than two years later he signed away ten years of those payments — worth over $6 million gross — for $2.25 million in cash. Twenty months after the win he was dead, and the cash was gone.
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.
Died in Miami, judged in Kingston· 10-min readFlorida
Bob Marley
He died in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981, at 36, with no will — he considered writing one an unseemly interest in death. Jamaican law then divided his estate, a New York jury heard a RICO case about it, and a Florida-appointed ancillary administrator spent a decade recovering what had gone missing.
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.
Fifty years of arguing about a face· 9-min readStill open
Bruce Lee
He died in 1973 owning the most recognisable silhouette of the twentieth century. Half a century later a federal judge in Manhattan could not decide which country's law governed it, because nobody could establish where he had been living when he died.
Six years and still open· 8-min readStill open
Chadwick Boseman
He died in August 2020 at 43 without a will. California split his estate three ways, a court ordered the distribution in October 2022, and in July 2026 his brothers went back to the same court on their parents' behalf saying it still had not been completed. As of August 2026 the matter is pending.
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.
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.
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.
The paintings the artist gave away· 10-min read
Donor intent
Norman Rockwell gave two paintings to the museum in the town where he had lived. Forty years after his death the museum announced it would sell them to fund its own survival. His sons sued and were told they had no right to be in the room.
The butler was the executor· 10-min read
Doris Duke
The richest girl in the world died in 1993 leaving roughly $1.2 billion, almost all of it to charity — and named as executor the butler she had hired six years earlier. Three years of Manhattan Surrogate's Court litigation followed, and it produced a rule that still governs how easily a court may fire the person a will chose.
Two pages and a misspelled name· 10-min read
Elvis & Lisa Marie Presley
A one-page amendment nobody witnessed removed Elvis's widow as trustee of his daughter's trust — and spelled her name wrong. Eleven months after the settlement, a stranger published a notice in a Memphis paper announcing the foreclosure sale of Graceland.
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.
Everything owned, nothing held· 9-min read
Father Divine
The Peace Mission movement owned hotels in Philadelphia, farms in the Hudson Valley, and a 73-acre chateau on the Main Line. Its leader held title to almost none of it — which made his assets nearly impossible to sue and made one $4,476 judgment the most consequential case of his life.
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.
Good paperwork, no conversation· 9-min read
Frank Zappa
Zappa did everything the checklist asks. Trust, catalogue, archive, a spouse who knew the business. Twenty-two years later his four children opened the document and found that two of them had been made managers of the other two.
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.
The codicil at 96· 9-min read
Georgia O'Keeffe
A 27-year-old potter knocked on the door at Ghost Ranch looking for odd jobs. O'Keeffe was 85. Eleven years later a codicil moved the residuary estate — reported at $47.2 million — from charity to him. Her sister and her niece went to court, and the answer arrived as a settlement rather than a verdict.
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.
The conservatorship decided a month before he died· 9-min read
Groucho Marx
At 86 he was the subject of a public court fight over who would control him: his companion and manager, or his son. A judge finally handed the job to his 27-year-old grandson three weeks before he died. Six years later a jury ordered the companion to repay the estate $471,842.
The estate with no paper trail· 8-min readFlorida
H. Wayne Huizenga
He built three Fortune 500 companies and owned three professional sports franchises. Forbes put him at $2.8 billion. When he died in Fort Lauderdale in 2018, the public record produced a probate file, a deed, and an auction result — and essentially nothing else. That is not an accident. It is Florida law working as designed.
The will they sealed· 9-min read
Harper Lee
Lee published one novel, then nothing for fifty-five years — until a second manuscript surfaced in a safe-deposit box when she was 88. She died the following February. Her will went under seal in an Alabama probate court, and a newspaper had to sue to read it. What it revealed was a trust nobody can read at all.
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.
Control, deliberately· 8-min read
J.D. Salinger
Salinger published nothing after 1965 and sued the people who tried to publish him anyway. He wrote for another forty-five years regardless. The copyrights went into a trust before he died, and the trustees have spent sixteen years doing what he did — saying no, on his behalf, with legal authority to keep saying it.
The richest man to lose everything· 9-min read
Jack Whittaker
He was already worth $17 million when he won a then-record $314.9 million Powerball jackpot at Christmas 2002. He took $113 million in cash, funded a foundation, gave away roughly $50 million — and faced more than 400 legal claims. By 2007 he said the money was gone.
The survivor who did everything right· 9-min read
Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner
He died at 44 in a car crash with a reputation and not much money. His widow took the entire estate, controlled the supply of paintings for twenty-eight years, commissioned the catalogue, and then left the whole thing to a foundation that gives money to living artists. No litigation. No family war.
Cash in the wall, then an auction· 9-min read
James “Whitey” Bulger
Agents found $822,000 and 30 guns inside the walls of a Santa Monica apartment. A federal court turned that, and everything else he owned, into money for the families of the people he was convicted of killing. Then his own estate became a plaintiff, and lost.
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 house nobody could afford to keep· 8-min readFlorida
James Deering
Deering spent a reported $15 million building a Renaissance villa on Biscayne Bay, then died in 1925 with no wife and no children. His two nieces inherited 180 acres of Miami waterfront and spent twenty-seven years working out how to get rid of it.
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.
One lawyer, three jobs· 9-min readFlorida
Joe DiMaggio
DiMaggio died in Hollywood, Florida in 1999. The lawyer who had represented him for two decades was named personal representative, initial trustee, and the person who would control the licensing of his name — all in a will that lawyer's own office was involved in producing. Then came the books, the tapes, and a federal grand jury.
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.
“You fellows will have to figure out how to spend it”· 8-min readFlorida
John D. MacArthur
He ran an insurance empire and 100,000 Florida acres from a corner table in a Singer Island hotel coffee shop. When he died in West Palm Beach in 1978, ninety-two percent of it went to a foundation he had given almost no instructions to. Three years later it invented the genius grant.
Whose claim is it after you die?· 9-min read
Junior Seau
A lawsuit is an asset. When the person who could have brought it dies, somebody inherits the right to sue — and somebody else may already have settled it on their behalf. The Seau children spent six years establishing that the claim was theirs.
The father, the Marine, and the inbox· 7-min read
Justin Ellsworth
A father asked for his dead son's email. The company said its terms of service did not allow it. A Michigan probate judge decided otherwise in April 2005, and every digital-asset statute in the United States traces back to that request.
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.
An estate made of copyright· 9-min read
L. Ron Hubbard
Hubbard signed a new will the day before he died in 1986. About $25 million of a roughly $26 million estate was intellectual property, and the plan routed it through a family trust into religious corporations — one of which the government would not recognise as tax-exempt until 1993.
Ten minutes that outrank your will· 10-min readFlorida
Legacy contacts and memorialisation
Apple, Google and Facebook each let you name who gets into your account after you die. Under Florida law those settings beat your will, your trust, and your power of attorney. Almost nobody sets them.
The house he promised out loud· 8-min read
Marlon Brando
He bought the house in 2002 and kept it in his own name. The woman who ran his household said he had promised to sign the deed over before he died. He never did — and an unwritten promise about real estate is, in almost every American state, a story rather than a contract.
Half a billion XRP, and a will that never mentioned it· 8-min read
Matthew Mellon
A Mellon and a Drexel by descent, he put $2 million into XRP and Forbes reported it had become a billion. When he died, his estate had one asset, no instructions, and a contract that limited how fast it could be sold.
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.
Ninety years of work, $18,000 left· 9-min read
Mickey Rooney
In March 2011 a 90-year-old man who had been making films since the Coolidge administration sat down in front of a United States Senate committee and described being unable to get information about his own money. Three years later he died. The estate came to eighteen thousand dollars.
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.
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.
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 name nobody could own· 10-min readStill open
Osho / Rajneesh
A movement bought 64,229 acres of Oregon for $5.75 million and sold the ranch six years later for less. The harder asset was the name. In 2009 the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled the OSHO registrations as generic — the word had become the movement, and a movement is not a brand.
Philanthropy as the estate plan· 9-min readStill open
Paul Allen
The Microsoft co-founder died in 2018 holding about $20.3 billion, two professional sports franchises, and a Giving Pledge. His four-page will said almost nothing, because everything ran through a trust he signed in 1993. Eight years on, the liquidation is still going.
Forty-two, and no warning· 8-min readFlorida
Payne Stewart
Stewart won the US Open in June 1999 and was dead by October, at 42, in an aircraft accident that made no sense and gave nobody any time. What follows a death like that is not a will contest. It is a wrongful death action, and in Florida only one person on earth is allowed to file it.
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.
Who owns the words· 8-min read
Roald Dahl
Dahl died in 1990 and left a body of work that behaves like a corporation. His family put the rights into a company, apologised in 2020 for things he had said, sold the company to Netflix in 2021, and in 2023 the publisher changed hundreds of words in the books. Every step of that was legal. None of it was his decision.
The estate that owed everything· 10-min read
Robert Maxwell
He went overboard from his yacht in November 1991. Within weeks the administrators found that hundreds of millions of pounds were missing from his companies' pension schemes. The empire was insolvent, the pensioners were unsecured, and in the end nobody was convicted of anything.
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.
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.
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 estate fight he lived to see· 10-min read
Sumner Redstone
Most probate litigation starts with a funeral. Redstone's started in 2015, while he was 92 and very much alive, when a former companion asked a Los Angeles court to declare him incapable of having removed her. Four years of litigation followed, in three states, over a trust that had not yet begun.
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.
The gap federal law left open· 9-min read
The body broker industry
Federal law forbids paying for organs. It was written for transplantation, and it stops there. Bodies donated for education and research fall outside it — and a small industry grew in the space, until an Arizona jury awarded donor families $58.5 million.
The most useful thing that never happened· 9-min read
The Bruce Willis iTunes story
In September 2012 the UK press reported that Bruce Willis was considering suing Apple for the right to leave his iTunes library to his daughters. His wife denied it the same day. The story was false — and it taught more people about digital inheritance than any statute has.
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.
Seventy-eight years, three generations, one surname· 10-min readFlorida
The France family
NASCAR is not a league. It is a private company in Daytona Beach that has been owned and run by one family since 1948, through two deaths, one abrupt departure, and a $2 billion move to take the public half private. In April 2026 the CEO's name stopped being France.
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.
Three generations, no agreement· 9-min read
The Gucci family
Guccio Gucci left his company to his sons in 1953. By 1993 not one share was owned by anybody named Gucci. Nothing exotic caused it — no forged will, no missing heir. Just an ownership structure that split every time somebody died and a family that never wrote down how to disagree.
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.
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.
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.”
Knowing it is not the same as being allowed to use it· 10-min readFlorida
The password problem
The most common digital estate plan in America is a spouse who knows the passwords. It fails on the two-factor code, it fails when the phone line is cancelled, and in the worst case it puts a grieving person on the wrong side of a felony statute.
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.
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.
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.
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 scholarship fund that outlived everyone· 9-min read
Ty Cobb
He bought Coca-Cola stock in 1907 and never sold. He funded a scholarship trust in 1953 and watched it work. When he died in 1961 he left it a quarter of an estate reported at $11.78 million — and it is still writing cheques in 2026.
The estate plan he had to write himself· 8-min read
Ulysses S. Grant
A partner's Ponzi scheme took everything he had in May 1884. That autumn he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He spent the last year of his life writing two volumes at the pace of a man racing a diagnosis, finished on July 18, 1885, and died five days later. His widow received about $450,000.
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.
— The other ways it goes wrong
Died without a willHandwritten willsCapacity & undue influencePetsStrange conditionsRemains & final wishesBlended familiesTaxes & 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.