Weird Last Requests in Wills

In her article “When it comes to wills, how strange can you get?“, Erline Andrews tells of a woman from Beverly Hills, California who stipulated in her will that she was to be dressed in her favorite nightgown and burried in her Ferrari. There is also the man from Springfield, Oregon who included a provision in his will stipulating that his skin was to be tanned like leather and used to bind a poetry book he had written.

Regardless of the request, there is nothing preventing someone from including that request among the provisions of his will. Whether those provisions are enforceable is another matter. A California court refused to enforce a provision in a will by a woman who ordered that her dog be put down after she died so that the dog would be saved the pain of living on after his beloved owner died. The request violated a law regarding the treatment of animals.

The best advice when deciding what to put in your will is to give the matter a good deal of thought. Give the attorney drafting your will as much information as you can regarding members of your family, all of your assets and how you would like those assets to be distributed in light of all the circumstances you are aware of. The more information you give to your attorney, the more options he can give you to maximize the benefit to those individuals you care most about.