Estate Planning Train Wrecks
A wise person once observed that a wreck on the shore serves as a beacon at sea. Perhaps the estate planning errors of others can also serve as instructive examples. But one must concede that the most egregious train wrecks of bad planning can be mesmerizing. Without further adieu, here is a collection of testators who left behind estates with notable errors, issues, and messes.
One would expect a substantive and carefully wrought testamentary plan from an accomplished jurist such as the former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, yet the will of Warren E. Burger consisted of a mere 176 words, most of which consisted of the certifications of the witnesses. In fact, there was only one sentence of dispositive instruction:
“The remainder of my estate will be distributed as follows: one-third to my daughter, Margaret Elizabeth Burger Rose, and two-thirds to my son, Wade A. Burger.”
It has been speculated that Burger wrote this simple will by himself. Did Justice Burger represent himself…and did he have a fool for a client?
With an estate estimated to be $2 million, the simple will he designed may have exposed his estate to unnecessary taxation. A number of articles have concluded that the will’s failure to address any estate taxes cost the estate hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One attorney claimed that the estate was $1.8 million and the failure to include marital trusts cost the estate $450,000 in taxes. Based on Burger’s death in 1995, the detractor must have applied the $600,000 exemption amount (based at that time on a unified credit of $192,800) and the effective tax rates at that time.
A national media feeding frenzy ensued, with stories in more than 60 newspapers. Burger was compared to the shoemaker whose famly has no shoes, and his estate became a widely used example of what not to do when planning an estate