Canines Swindled Out Of $8,000,000,000
Posted on February 26, 2009 - Filed Under Animals, News Item | 4 Comments
From BBC News:
The fortune left by late real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley can go to charities other than those solely related to dogs, a US court has ruled.
A New York City judge said that Helmsley’s legal documents allowed her estate’s trustees “sole discretion” in donating the money to charity.
When Helmsley died in 2007 it was widely reported that she wanted her $8bn fortune spent only on canines.
…
Animal rights groups had reacted gleefully at the reports last year that all of Helmsley’s fortune would go to the care of dogs.
Charities had said the money could be used to rescue dogs from disaster zones and to tackle dog fighting, rabies in China and India as well as the canine over-population problem.
It is not clear now if any dog-welfare organisations will receive any of the funds.
If I left a lot of money in my will to something I cared about, I don’t think it would be alright for a judge to award the money to some other ‘more worthy’ causes after I died. I can’t speak to the legal reasoning involved in this judgment, but it seems to quite obviously go against the spirit of the law involved in the making of wills.
Comments
4 Responses to “Canines Swindled Out Of $8,000,000,000”
Leave a Reply
If I had an 8 billion dollar fortune, I’d sure as hell make certain that my will didn’t leave any wiggle room which might allow someone to go against my wishes.
If the consequences of this are merely that a bunch of other charities get 8 billion then I can’t say I’m particularly bothered by it.
I bet there wasn’t much wriggle room to speak of, but the judge can get away with such reasoning because animals don’t have much of a lobby, and the few pro-animal groups that do exit won’t want to take this on because people will say they’re trying to take money away from sick children etc…
Leaving 12m for a dog over your grandchildren is a bit excessive though. I mean what is a dog going to do with 12m. Thats like one per year. It would just get swindled by whoever takes care of it.
True, but if she made a point of not leaving anything to her grandchildren then she must have had a reason for it, so I don’t see why they should be allowed divvy up the dog’s spoil between them. Anyway, I made a point of not quoting that part, since I think the fate of the $8 billion intended by the deceased to be spent on canine charities is more outrageous.
To return to the original point again, can you imagine the uproar if somebody left their fortune to some ethnic/religious foundation, and then a judge came along and ruled, on a technicality, that it could be spent on other stuff? The ethnic/religious group’s lobby would cause an almighty stink, and they’d be fully justified in doing so.