Your last will and testament – it’s generally regarded as a bit of a dry subject, and in fact it’s something that many people don’t even think about, with a 2013 survey revealing that almost half of adults in the UK don’t have a will.
Although nearly 72 per cent of over 55s have made a will, the numbers of young adults (18-24) who have made one is very low, although encouragingly the percentage has risen from 5.2 per cent in 2012 to 10.9 per cent in 2013.
You might think you have little to leave – but you would be surprised at what people have left behind as their last will and testament in the past….here are a few of our favourite examples.
William Shakespeare
Died: 1616
William Shakespeare famously asked that his wife, Anne Hathaway, received his ‘second best bed’ after his death. Leaving a bed to someone wasn’t terribly unusual at the time, as beds were expensive, but his insistence on only the second best bed being left to his wife was taken so seriously, along with this epitaph “Blest be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed by he that moves my bones,” that nobody dared bury Anne next to him when she died seven years later.
Benjamin Franklin
Died: 1790
On the face of it, Franklin’s last wish that his daughter did not engage in “the expensive, vain and useless pastime of wearing jewels,” may have sounded odd. There was a reason for it, though - in his role as French Ambassador, he had been given a portrait of King Louis XVI in a diamond-studded frame. He didn’t want Sarah to remove the 408 gems and turn them into jewellery, so made the proviso in a bid to keep the artwork intact.
Harry Houdini
Died: 1926
You would probably expect Houdini to come up with something unusual for his will. He did. He asked his wife to hold an annual séance so that he could reveal himself to her. He’d spent years trying to contact his mother via mediums and spiritualists and had no luck, but left his wife a secret note with 10 random words that he planned to somehow communicate to once he had passed on. She tried every Halloween for ten years but apparently, Houdini stayed mysteriously quiet…
Napoleon Bonaparte
Died: 1821
Napoleon’s rather bizarre last wish was that after he died, his head should be shaved and his hair divided up among his friends. The hair he left behind was recently analysed and it was found to contain high levels of arsenic; he showed signs of arsenic poisoning before his death.
John Bowman
Died: 1891
Determined to return one day, John Bowman asked that his dinner to be prepared every night after his death, just in case he was reincarnated. He set up a trust to pay for the housework in his 21 room mansion to be carried out, obviously wanting a tidy home to return to. The trust ran out of money in 1850 but there was no sign of his return…
Sturrock, Armstrong and Thompson offer a free initial consultation for anyone wishing to make a Will, as well as very competitive fees.
If you need advice and assistance with making wills, setting up trusts and administering estates contact them today.
