This week I had a flashback to law school/bar exam days and the concept of "The Parade of Horribles." I was reading a magazine and it seemed that in every article I read something tragic had happened to the author. Everything from multiple family member deaths in the same year to divorce to addiction, and the list goes on. It reminded me of studying Wills and Property Law for the bar exam last summer. The only way to make a really interesting (and challenging) question about the law of inheritance is to have a parade of horribles. Let me illustrate:
Great-grandpa Grant has one living son, Grandpa George, who is married to Grandma Gladys. Grandma Gladys is a fertile octogenarian (meaning, she can miraculously conceive and bear children at the ripe old age of 70, well past the normal child-bearing age). George and Gladys have three living children: Albert, Chuck, and Edith. Albert and his wife Betty have three children; Chuck and his wife Diane have two children; and Edith and her husband Frank could not have children so they adopted a child from Siberia. The family gathers for great-grandpa Grant's 95th birthday celebration, but Grant keels over into his birthday cake and dies. His estate is worth $100 million and he dies intestate (without a will). Three months later (and before the estate has been administered in full to the heirs) George dies of a bad case of polio because he was never vaccinated as a child. He also dies intestate. Gladys, the fertile octogenarian, is 7 months pregnant. Three days after George's death, Albert is killed in a tornado. His will leaves his entire estate to his mistress, Delilah, who also died in the tornado and was the sole guardian of her adopted child from Paraguay. At Albert and Delilah's funeral, Chuck declares loudly, "I never wanted any inheritance anyway!" and storms out of the church. Frank leaves for a hunting expedition in the Amazon two days after the funeral and never returns. Who inherits great-grandpa Grant's $100 million estate and in what portions?
I ran this scenario by my fiance last night, and being the wonderful man that he is, he listened. Then I asked, "Why don't we ever talk about the parade of happiness? You know, the good in life? Why aren't there magazine articles about that?" And he responded, "Well, it would get too confusing. Can you imagine if after the parade of horribles you had Bill miraculously coming back to life and Ted returning from a trip when everyone thought he was dead?" He flashed me a grin.
That, dear readers, was a happy moment.
