Inheritance disputes: where there’s a will there’s a war
21st August 2008
Telegraph.co.uk has an article about inheritance disputes. There is a view held by some that, when there is a pot of gold at the end of a life, the relatives start to fight. The article shows that this is not always the case.
Take Anita Rodick’s will:
‘Sam Roddick, whose mother Anita left her and her sister Justine nothing in her will, and donated the Body Shop fortune to good causes, agrees [that the children of the wealthy should make their own way in the world]. “It’s the continual thing that people want to know about: am I upset that I didn’t get the cash?” she says.
“I knew when I was 16 that I wasn’t going to get anything. The amount of capital she did have was so extraordinarily large that what we could have got would have been obscene.”
Yet she feels sympathetic to other children who fight their disinheritance. “Fighting about wills has nothing to do with greed. It’s all to do with pain. I think most people don’t know how to express the pain, and they get competitive trying to validate their importance to that person.”
As for the character-building virtue of standing on your own two feet, that’s nothing to feel smug about, according to Roddick. “I don’t think money or no money makes you a better person,” she insists. “The culmination of how you adore somebody isn’t what you give them on your death. It’s how you treat them in your life.” ‘
Link: The article can be found here.
