Of legacies, especially on terms. Following up and not following up on the legatee's compliance. The curious case of the Cambridge college. Of net residue after full payment or partial payment or evasion of all due taxes. Offshore tax evasion before and after death.
I like the words 'devolution' (distribution within the testator's circle) and 'dispersal' (the opposite). The absurd notion that baby boomers' testamentary wealth will be dispersed. The even more ludicrous idea that inheritance tax or estate tax will somehow diffuse that wealth.
I'm interested in interim and final distribution by crooked corrupt estate managers of stolen estate assets: assets that vested in the estate manager after her criminal application to the court to be appointed interim administrator and that she is basically deigning to bestow on co-criminal heirs, who know exactly what she's up to.
Pressing the estate manager to make a distribution, with a threat to apply to the court for a substantive and a costs order against her, is always fun.
I'll be looking into this.
1. A Rajastan Story: high society lows
A former acquaintance of mine (let's call him M; a most iniquitous operator) is the second son of Rajput father. Father dies leaving (as I recall) a valid not-contested will leaving everything, or at least the main residence, to the first-born son. No title deeds.
The frightened vulnerable nervous cowardly solitary widow understandably sides (though there's nothing legal on which she can or would need to take sides) with her first-born, who now has the family property (we all know what can happen to frail elderly helpless friendless net-deficit widows in India at the hands of their own children).
M got nothing and is understandably aggrieved comprehensively. Sleeps with a shotgun (for himself, the brother, the mother?).
No-one takes the high road. No-one shows any mercy to anyone else. Lots of hauteur. Lots of inanimate affected adjusting of silk headscarves in the Rajastan heat (the only place on earth — actually Jesselmeer actually — I have felt my eyeballs burning). Short of mass homicide, what is M's remedy in practice (especially taking into account the absurdity of Indian chance'ry litigation), and for all its ease and obviousness, is it stable and sustainable in the long term, including in relation to his heirs?