Life insurance is about protecting your family if you die. Of course, that’s also what wills are for.
Moreover, with life insurance policies often running into millions of Dollars, it's no secret that life insurance policies often represent most of the assets to be distributed by a will. So when the will ends, the fight over the insurance payout often begins!
And that’s why wills and life insurance are so closely related. Well, kind of…
As life insurers, we were especially intrigued to read about “the 10 strangest will bequests ever”.
Here are some of them to whet your appetite…
- Revenge is sweet. In 1960 Samuel Bratt grasped the opportunity to get even with his wife who had never allowed him to smoke. He left her £330,000 on condition she smoked five cigars a day.
- American housewife Mary Kuhery left her husband $2.00 as long as he promised to spend at least half of it on a rope to hang himself.
- Eccentric lawyer Charles Millar left shares in his racetracks and breweries to anti-gambling and temperance supporters. And three men who were known to hate each other were given joint lifetime use of his Jamaican holiday home.
- Harold West was so worried he’d become a vampire after his death in 1972, that in his will he left strict instructions that his doctor “drive a steel stake through my heart to make sure that I am properly dead”.
- Predeceased by his wife and two daughters, John Bowman was convinced that after his death in 1891, the family would be reincarnated. So in his will he left a trust fund for the upkeep of his 21-room mansion, instructing his servants to prepare dinner every night in case he and his family were hungry when they returned. The money ran out in 1950.
Now… that’s where life insurance comes in!!!
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