Nearly one-half of Canadian adults do not have an estate plan which includes a will. As a financial planner, I can't stress enough of it's importance in a complete financial plan. Here is one interesting, real-life story...
Lesson to billionaires: get a will. Especially if you have fathered nine children with mistresses.
That sounds blindingly obvious, of course. But a nasty estate fight breaking out in New Jersey demonstrates that even multibillionaires can sometimes neglect the most basic of wealth-management issues.
The fight concerns the fortune of the late Wang Yung-ching, a plastics magnate who lived in new Jersey and Taiwan and was widely known in business circles as the “god of management.” His wealth was once estimated at $7 billion. Yet he didn’t leave a will when he died last year at age 91.
Oh, and he fathered at least nine children–with women other than his wife.
One question is whether the court battle will take place in New Jersey or Taiwan. A New Jersey Superior Court Judge ruled this week that Mr. Wang’s estate will have to open up certain financial records to figure out how much it holds in New Jersey.
Mr. Wang’s wife of 70 years, Wang Yueh Lan, who lives in Taiwan, is his legal widow. His oldest son, the 58-year-old Winston Wong, says he has power of attorney, granted by Ms. Wang, who, by the way, isn’t Mr. Wong’s mom.
Rest assured, this is just the beginning. Just sorting out how to divide up the estate among the widow and the nine children will be a difficult process. Image what will happen if any of the various mistresses/mothers emerge seeking funds.
And we thought Michael Jackson’s estate was complicated.
Posted by Robert Frank
Saverio Manzo
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