Spring 2005 Contrarian’s Notebook

When Dhirubhai Ambani built Reliance Industries from scratch into India's largest conglomerate within little more than two decades, he joined an elite fraternity of global super-entrepreneurs. But when Ambani died of a stroke at age 69 in 2002, he joined a much less exclusive club: people who never got around to writing a will. This dubious group includes more than half of all Americans, not to mention U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant and James A. Garfield. A chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Frederick Vinson, died without a will. Even Thomas Jarman, who was once widely considered the world's greatest authority on wills, somehow never managed to write one for himself.

No legal document matters more than a will, yet the mere thought of a will induces a kind of intellectual paralysis among otherwise mature and rational adults. Even those folks who do compose wills usually fail to devote sufficient time to reviewing the document with their lawyer and relating it to their specific family situation (see my item about Jack Kent Cooke below). And sometimes, after taking the trouble to prepare a proper will, they put off signing it until it's too late.

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