Reply With QuoteGenerally, where are you located in Virginia?Originally Posted by ioticus
Yeah wtf? Obviously when you die your estate goes toward paying your debts first. How would anything else make any sense at all?
Generally, where are you located in Virginia?
Rockingham County.
You're dead, you can't sue a corpse. I'm not saying I agree with this attitude but it's not entirely irrational to think that once a person is dead any outstanding contracts are rendered unenforceable.
Generally I agree that whatever outstanding debts or obligations a person has when they die should be fulfilled as best as possible by their estate. This goes part and parcel with enabling people to direct how their estate is to be handled after their death.
No it doesn't. There is no reason you could not have a system where creditors are paid out by the estate first, with the remainder (or part of the remainder) going to the family. I don't see how giving creditors' claims priority over an estate means we must then treat a will as sacrosanct.
If we're going to enforce contracts on an estate then I believe it makes sense that we offer the legal authority to direct whatever remains. If We impose legal obligations after death why aren't we allowing legal privileges? Is considering an estate a short lived legal entity with all of the privileges and responsibilities of the live person to ensure an orderly and directed dispersal of their property so distasteful?
So now we've moved on from the "leaving everything to my stepmom" part of the thread, and on to the "my Dad wants to take a suicide potion" part of the thread.
What's in that, anyway? And did he really call it a potion?
Socrates took hemlock. I'm not sure that's still state of the art when it comes to suicide drinks, though.
Pentobarbital.
and the plot thickens..............(yes, this deserves the ...)
If a man dies owing money on his house, car, credit cards etc. those creditors will expect payment or return of assets even after the guy dies.
Well Hell now you've got some leverage for will money. You just have to watch your father die.
Here's what I'm getting at:
A guy dies, leaving $1 million in cash(for simplicity). He also leaves $300k in debts. He has three parties named in his will, charity, friends, family. We'll assume estate taxes, if any, have been already paid(the State always gets paid first). He leaves $500k to the charity, ~$200K to the friends, and the remainder to family(he knows it'll be very little if anything).
Under the 50% system, the $700k is split first with the half going to family. So now the charity which was supposed to get $500k can get at most $350k which leaves nothing to the friends.
I would rearrange that so the charity gets their 500k off the top, as the priority beneficiary. Then the 50% rule could be invoked on the remainder thereby allowing both family AND other beneficiaries to collect more in keeping with the deceased's wishes. In fact, in this way the family still makes out like bandits compared to what the will said, and the friends don't get completely screwed.
And if he has life insurance, you'd better hope the insurer doesn't find out about the hemlock or whatever.
I wonder if that depends on who the beneficiary is. I'm pretty sure that one of my financiers has taken out one variety of life insurance policy or another on me at some point as a hedge in case I take the wrong shot one night and wake up dead. Now I think that's been replaced by "mortgage insurance" or something to that effect, but I wonder if suicide would invalidate a life insurance policy taken out by your creditors. Can you take out a "hostile" life insurance policy?
This thread is a macabre comedy. Ioticus says he wasn't that close to his father and immediately people are trying to figure out which of them was raping the other. Now we're talking about how best to kill the old man and still claim the life insurance. Nice.
I have a friend who tells jokes the way that ioticus tells family stories.
"Wait, did I mention Bob's a midget? I think I forgot to mention that. Oh wait, was that the punchline? No wait, go back. I forgot to tell you all this happened in North Korea."
Appropriate.
Haha... this!
Because otherwise no one over the age of 50 would be able to get a loan.
That and because, again, it's in the interest of society to consider most strongly the interests of the living, not the dead, when deciding on the rules for divvying up an estate.
Because when you're alive and you owe a ton of money, give all your money away to friends and family and then declare bankruptcy, your future is negatively affected by that decision. A dead person doesn't give a shit about their future.
Not only that but your creditors are likely to sue the people you gave the money to because technically you are giving away other people's money.
Yep - Wal-Mart was taking out policies on their employees for a time.
I think you have to show some kind of insurable interest - I don't think you could take one out on random stranger you suspect will die soon.
You must be reading a different thread than the rest of us.
Do note that I'm not advocating negating debt on death (I said the exact opposite!!). I'm advocating that once creditors are satisfied the rest of the estate should be dispersed at the discretion of the deceased as stated in their will. I'm advocating an estate have both responsibilities and privileges of most legal entities. Not an absence of both or either.
Mandating a portion of the money be distributed to specific people doesn't do anything more to meet the interests of society than letting the deceased dictate exactly where it goes. For society's needs to be met it would have to take the property and then disperse it to those who need it the most, i.e. 100% inheritance tax.
Ok, that's a fine opinion, but your initial argument was that since we impose obligations on an estate, we must then allow testamentary freedom. But that argument doesn't actually make sense. We definitely could say that an estate must pay out creditors, but then be apportioned based on fairness, or simply paid out to the family. And the reason we would give creditors priority would be to ensure access to credit.
In my jurisdiction, the will is preemptively valid, but the family can challenge the will if the will is unfair. So you can actually have both: testamentary freedom, as long as that freedom is exercised in a way that is fair to the family. It's about fairness to the family, not about fairness to society more broadly.Mandating a portion of the money be distributed to specific people doesn't do anything more to meet the interests of society than letting the deceased dictate exactly where it goes. For society's needs to be met it would have to take the property and then disperse it to those who need it the most, i.e. 100% inheritance tax.
My response was to Tortilla who explicitly stated "interests of society", nothing at all with the family. I also don't agree that a will should be considered "fair" by the family. If someone wants to leave everything to charity or their best friend and nothing to their children that should be their prerogative. I'm fine with allowing challenges but the basis of those challenges should have to be more than the family just not liking it.
I know that there's like a three month period in at least some jurisdictions in the states (all of them? I'm not a lawyer and I didn't pay too much attention to non-relevant ones when researching this a couple years back) prior to bankruptcy where creditors can challenge transactions. So if you give your shit away during that period, they can hit an undo button on it and repo without having to dick with whoever you gave it to. And if prior to that period, if they creditor shows you were just giving shit away they can probably convince the judge to fuck you in the ass. Which really gives you a serious incentive to undo that shit yourself or not do it in the first place, because you are relying on the judge to unfuck your situation enough for you to fix it.
So for those of you wondering, don't try to get cute with the bankruptcy rules cuz homie don't play that way.
1. If your father wants to provide for your stepmother and then have that money pass to your benefit when she dies and still stay out of the hands of your loving wife, he needs to turn on his Bat Signal and speak to a lawyer about establishing a trust. A trust takes most of the trust out of entrusting property to people.
2. It's nice that you called him.
3. If he wants to kill himself, that's his decision. People tend not to be willy-nilly about that shit.
Oh god, I wish. Imagine the betting industry that would start up, centered around parks, buffet's, and maybe the mall?
And PC gaming.
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