Wills of Famous Public Figures

One of the drawbacks of having a will probated is that it becomes publicly available and lacks privacy. Although there are ways to avoid this, many learn this lesson too late to do anything about it. Fortunately for us, though, we can turn the mistakes of others to our advantage.

Available below are a number of wills of famous public figures. These wills serve a function beyond merely satisfying the public's ghoulish need for private details. These wills also provide a road map of how actual wills are structured and drafted.

If you think about it, these people had the money to afford the very best in estate planning and legal advice. In addition, some of them even had law degrees or other practical business savvy of their own to rely on.

The wills provided here vary because of specific state requirements or the specific will provisions included. However, they should all (with one very odd exception) reflect top-of-the-line will drafting. This information should be particularly useful to somebody trying to piece together his or her own will.

• Warren Burger (former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)
• Joe DiMaggio
• Jerry Garcia
• Harry Helmsley (billionaire real estate tycoon and husband of infamous wife Leona)
• John F. Kennedy
• John Lennon
• Linda McCartney
• Marilyn Monroe
• Richard M. Nixon
• David Packard (multi-billionaire of Hewlett-Packard fame)

The files are in rich text format (RTF) that is suitable for use with most word processing programs used in the Windows environment.

For more information, see our discussion of wills.

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