On One Condition: Difference between revisions

 

== Literature ==

** The 1969 British TV series ''Doctor in the House'' also has an eternal student like this.

* ''Last to Die'' by James Grippando features a millionaire who left his considerable fortune in trust with the stipulation that the last surviving member of a particular group of people would inherit the entire amount. He did it because he hated all of the prospective heirs and wanted them to fight one another for the money.

** The kicker here is that Ralph Ottur ''hated'' the American Nazi Party. He picked them as the next-in-line heir to make sure the living Black Widowers put enough effort into solving the riddle.

* One [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] story turned on a will by which [[The Unfavorite]] son inherited until his father was buried, whereupon it would all pass to the other son. Friends of [[The Unfavorite]] stole the body to prevent burial, Lord Peter discovers the will in a book, family disputes erupt, and the final touch is Lord Peter's deducing that from the water stain in the book but not the will, that the other son had hidden the will so [[The Unfavorite]] would not find out about the condition in time.

** Also, interestingly enough, it is explain in complete detail why this is necessary.

* One of [[O. Henry]]'s stories featured a young man addicted to gambling who was granted his inheritance on the condition that he not gamble for a set period. On the last day of his abstinence, he learns that the inheritance will instead go to a pretty young female relative should he fail. Of course, his next action is to go into the lawyer's office and solemnly proclaim that he just finished betting on the horses and that he was yielding the inheritance.

** There's another advantage - the Assassin's Guild will ''not'' take a second contract out on someone, technically granting Moist some slight degree of safety. Also, no self-respecting Assassin would [[Even Evil Has Standards|even consider accepting a contract on a dog]], so Mr. Fusspot is safe on that end, too.

* [[Sidney Sheldon]] book ''Bloodline'' features a pharmaceutical company named Roffe & Sons, which founder saw to it that his heirs wouldn't be able to sell their shares of the company unless all of them agreed to do it.

* ''[[Brewster's Millions]]'': Montgomery Brewster must be penniless by the day he becomes 28 years old in order to inherit his uncle James T. Sedgwick's seven-million-dollar estate. And he can't simply give away whatever he had before. Even while attempting to become penniless, Montgomery must show some business skills. Donations to charity mustn't go far beyond the usually donated by other rich people. It doesn't help things that, by the time Montgomery Brewster was informed of his uncle's death and wealth, it was a little less than one year from the deadline and he had already inherited one million dollars from his paternal grandfather Edwin P. Brewster, who was the reason of Uncle James' unusual set of conditions. James Sedgwick hated Edwin Brewster to the point of not wanting his heir to have anything that came from Edwin in any way. This was also the reason Sedgwick wouldn't allow his nephew to simply donate Edwin's inheritance away: he believed Edwin Brewster would be remembered and praised for this.

 

== Real Life ==

* The Rule Against Perpetuities exists in the UK, the US and other countries that inherited the Common Law. In its most common form, it simply states "No conditional bequest is valid unless it must vest, if at all, within a life in being plus 21 years." It works to prevent somebody from controlling their assets from beyond the grave forever (i.e. "in perpetuity"). Certain relevant reasonable-but-ridiculous legal illustrations showing why you don't want to be in arms reach include the "fertile octogenarian" and the "unborn widow" rules. The will in the former leaves land to person A, aged 85 and childless, for her life, then to the first of her natural born children to reach age 25; since the children are not extant at the time of the will it is possible for the condition to be unfulfilled for 21 years, the bequest to the unborn children is invalid and the old lady inherits the land absolutely. The will in the latter leaves the property to person A for life, then their widow for life, and then any of their children then still living (at the time of the widow's death). In this case, the condition for the last part doesn't need to activate within 21 years of the will activating (i.e. the widow lives more than 21 years), so the will could be rendered invalid. Alternately, A might not be married, in which case there is no person who could become his widow, or A might divorce and remarry, in which case the widow at the time the will activates is not the widow referred to by the person who wrote the original will. The will might not prescribe A's children ''still living'' and instead simply refer to A's children, in which case it would refer to those children alive at the time of the will's activation and still be valid.

** Not necessarily, some jurisdictions specify that if a deceased person is named as the heir, and the will does not contain a legitimate second-to-die clause, the named heir's children stand to inherit that property. So, if A had three children, and one of those children died before A, leaving two children of his own, A's two surviving children would each get 1/3 of the estate, while the two grandchildren by the deceased sibling would each get 1/6.