Anna Nicole *shakes head*

I have heard that Anna Nicole Smith was interesting to watch in the same way that watching a train wreck was interesting. You're ashamed of yourself for watching but you can't tear your eyes away. I had no actual interest in Anna Nicole Smith. I bumped into stories about her from time to time in connection with various litigation in which she was involved. But in her death, she has become interesting to me, because her will is a hellacious mess.

The point of a will is to dispense with the dead person's assets, and figure out what to do with stuff or people they cared for based on their intent, which, it is presumed, will be laid out neatly and clearly in a will. However, I read cases all the time in which this ideal simply has not panned out. Either it's the testator's misunderstanding of the law or poor writing, or the lawyer's ambiguity or whatever, but it isn't clear what the testator wanted, yet that intent is what the court looks to for clarity.

Miss Smith, whose boyfriend was an attorney (who is in fact named as executor of her will), has a will from 2001. In 2006 she had another child (possibly by said attorney) but apparently never updated her will to include said child. Far from it, her 2001 will actually clearly indicates her intent that the will only be construed to include her then-living (now dead) son and no future issue.

I'm not going to speculate on whether or not her attorney/possible co-parent will wind up in the next edition of Trusts & Estates over this. But it speaks to just what was distasteful to me about Smith in the first place. Maybe she wasn't well educated and came from a hard-scrabble life. That's no reason not to take care of her own, and at least in the five months since her baby was born, she should have done just that.

I found her sort of amusing in life. I find her unforgiveable in death.

Source:
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/gen/ap/Anna_Nicole_Smith_Optional.html