Taxation & Estate Planning

All of Me and Honestly Dearest, You're Dead

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

The Wall Street Journal has recently mentioned one movie and one book that relate to estate planning and probate.

1. All of Me. Mentioned by Joe Morgenstern in a sidebar in this column. Here's part of Mr. Morgenstern's summary:

[Lily Tomlin] plays Edwina, a dying millionaire spinster who arranges to have her soul transplanted into the body of a beautiful young woman. [Steve Martin] plays Roger, an attorney who's supposed to revise her will. When she dies prematurely, in the midst of great confusion, something goes wrong and she ends up sharing Roger's body in a crazed kind of joint tenancy. Though the film is imperfect, the physical comedy is often sublime.

2. Honestly Dearest, You're Dead. This is a novel by Jack Fredrickson, reviewed here by Tom Nolan. From the first paragraph of Mr. Nolan's review:

Vlodek "Dek" Elstrom is not a commanding figure. A divorced, disgraced private investigator who hit bottom after his reputation in Chicago was torpedoed by cunning crooks, Elstrom is living in an unheated stone turret in Rivertown, Ill. So why has he been named the executor for the modest estate of a dead stranger in a small town in Michigan?

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).