When your work revolves around the writing of wills, you do need to take a light-hearted moment from time to time. Fortunately, there is a fair bit of humour to be found in wills themselves – particularly with all those bizarre requests out there.
We gathered a few good examples shared online. Here’s our top five…
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The unlikely to be resolved one
Let’s start with the will that might be difficult to carry out the wishes of – a man once left £26,000 to Jesus Christ with the only provision being that his identity needed to be established first!
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The romantic one
Jack Benny, a US comedian who died in 1974, requested that a long-stemmed red rose be delivered to his wife Mary Livingstone every day for the rest of her life.
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The Alfred Hitchcock-ish one
When a Portuguese aristocrat Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara wrote his will, he left his large fortune to seventy strangers chosen at random from a Lisbon phone directory. Unsurprisingly, one of his unsuspecting heiresses thought it was a cruel joke at first. Imagine that!
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The shudder-down-your-spine one
When the executive editor of Captain American and Iron Man comics, Mark Gruenwald, wrote his will, he requested that his ashes were mixed with the ink that was used to print the comic books. And if you’re wondering? Yes his wishes were carried out! Take a look at that old magazine copy of yours – you never know, it might be worth putting in your will now too.
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The ambitious one
Harry Houdini, a magician who died in 1926 left 10 random words to his wife. He asked her to have an annual séance every Halloween and use those words to communicate with him. Despite trying, it seemed Houdini’s wife came across a bad signal every year – she gave up after 10 years of trying.
