What it takes a very rich man to make a just enduring will that will be to his credit. The disposition and mentality of testators. The importance or irrelevance of leaving something or anything to people one does not care for. The 'Hello Harry' clause.
I'll be thinking about some examples.
'Leave everything to me": 'Sonny' Bond Street filofax pseudo-upper-class wideboy (one of three) screws his own wheelchaired 'Mumsy'; pictures all gone!
This is an ongoing 'interesting case' saga that has its place elsewhere, but I'll mention it here to fill up space. It's an English-Swiss version of the Marshall-Morrissey screwing of Brooke Astor (no relation). Manipulative ingratiating professional nuisance Captain The Honourable 'Sonny' FB steals the art collection of 'Mumsy' AN.
He lifts the pictures off the walls of her flat at the Lausanne Palace Hotel (the doorman sees him walk out with things rolled up under his arm…) and fences them through one or more 'Darling' luvvy criminals at Christie's, and sells one or two privately, and gives some away. He lies that she gave them to him, wanted to give them to him, would have given them to him, wanted to change her will in his favor, etc etc. Tries to get her to change her will. Tries to get her to execute a codicil (maybe she did…). He hosed this frail, wheelchair-bound, post-stroke, friendless, helpless, not expected to live long, etc lady good and proper — with the fulsome help throughout of her own two English solicitors and her own Lausanne lawyer.
Of course there's a multiply criminal enduring power of attorney and a multiply criminal ordinary power of attorney, in favor of FB and PM, probably never invoked, drafted by FB's English lawyers who then appoint themselves as, also, her lawyers ("I am your lawyer do you agree?"); her Swiss lawyer was appointed by the English lawyers.
FB consigns her to various Swiss nursing homes. She then dies. Sole co-executor sole co-heir FB then steals more pictures and fences them with one or more other luvvies at Sotheby's. The English and Swiss lawyers go along with and assist everything: idiopathically and derivately criminally. Sole co-heir sole co-executor sole co-power-attorney PM has the job of sorting it all out. So many dud and or dishonest English and Swiss specialist lawyers. So much apparent absence of Swiss law clarity on fundamental points, as if this situation is unique and unprecedented. Lots of intense work to reconstruct AN's picture collection and try to get AN's English and (PM: 'immovable') Swiss lawyers, AN's estate managers' English and Swiss lawyers (the same lawyers) and FB's English and Swiss lawyers (the same until he uses other lawyers), etc.
The whole thing ends up killing PM. And then his estate is hosed by another set of lawyer criminals and criminal heirs, and then the estates of AN, PM and FB are criminalised by lawyer criminals etc. It's an incredible multi-part continuing saga of life, death and monumental dishonesty and greed by more than a dozen lawyers including at least four barristers, luvvies at two auction houses, criminal heirs, and a few others.
Multiply contradictorily, lawyer criminals crave acclaim for their criminal achievements from other lawyer criminals, yet don't care to be exposed to — and potentially acclaimed by — the general public, especially if disguised as legitimate. Multiple double life indeed! Eschewing the wrong sort of publicity, they will criminally threaten to criminally bring in public, and criminally conduct in public, criminal defamation litigation.
All those contradictions are reinforced and pursued in that criminal defamation litigation. The criminal lawyer plaintiff has numerous contradictory criminal objectives: to criminally defend her privacy and to renounce it; to criminally evade public attention and to criminally attract it; to criminally play the civil court system (and later, at prosecution, the criminal court system) to criminally avow to those who can spot it her criminality, of which the defamation litigation is merely a continuation, and to criminally deny it to those who can't spot it.
In particular, to criminally establish, protect, defend and promote two contradictory criminal 'reputations':-
her genuine repute among the criminal sorority for criminality. This will not be expressly in the pleadings but it will definitely be inherent and implicit. You'll want to use this litigation to be remembered in the right quarters for having pulled off, and be still pulling off, an increasingly elaborate and brazen perfect crime. Further victimising the victim heir and conning a defamation court on top with criminally conducted defamation litigation adds that special something to your shoulder bag of makeup and accessories. It might even work in a jurisdiction known for its idiotic cultural corruption, where even the most flagrant malefactor is judicially pronounced in all judicial pomposity to have 'fragrance' (one of the more notorious English judicial decisions of the 1990s)
her criminally concocted reputation among normal honest people, especially among credulous naïve callow impressionable suggestible prospective and actual customers, for honesty etc. A victory here would be the ultimate foundation powder to be blown in any victim's face. Since it does not exist where the proto-plaintiff is leading a double life, this is not a 'reputation' properly so called and in theory cannot properly be sued on. You'll get into court with your multiple twin personalities and multiple contradictions and you might even get somewhere if the judge, the victim heir defendant and his lawyers aren't up to it, but in the right circumstances you and your associates will be annihilated in public plus costs. (A good read on defamation: Spencer Bower, A Code of The Law of Actionable Defamation, 1908.)
The sensible righteous victim heir will be ready for this insanity.