Wills and The Great Stork Derby

After many years of procrastination, Pam and I met with a lawyer recently to start the process of getting a proper will prepared. Having no kids has made this long delay somewhat less irresponsible than it sounds: we're joint tenants of our main assets, each other's primary beneficiary, etc., so one of us dying is "easy" in that all the assets shoot directly to the spouse. But it would be a waste of some perfectly good life insurance proceeds if we check out at the same time while intestate.

The task list is pretty basic from Mr. Lawyer: think through who we want assets to go to, chose secondaries, decide who we'd want to have power to pull a plug if needed. A bit bleak, but not unexpected. As with any homework assignment, I came home and consulted the interwebs for help, to see if I could find some examples similar to the sorts of scenarios we might choose. After a bit of somewhat useful research (e.g., notions like per stirpes, which we may use), my good intentions derailed into random link chasing, landing eventually on one Charles Vance Millar, whose whimsical will led to a decade of legal entertainment back in the Great Depression. A good summary is on Snopes, but you have to like any will that opens with:

This Will is necessarily uncommon and capricious because I have no dependents or near relations and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death and what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime.

The clause that led to all the fun:

All the rest and residue of my property wheresoever situate I give, devise and bequeath unto my Executors and Trustees named below in Trust to convert into money as they deem advisable and invest all the money until the expiration of nine years from my death and then call in and convert it all into money and at the expiration of ten years from my death to give it and its accumulations to the Mother who has since my death given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children as shown by the Registrations under the Vital Statistics Act. If one of more mothers have equal highest number of registrations under the said Act to divide the said moneys and accumulations equally between them.

The winning count of births? Nine.
The number of women who so inherited? Four.

It all amused me, anyway...