Taxation & Estate Planning

Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, and Probate

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

The headline of this post makes the English major in me very happy. Here's the story -- this morning Roger Ebert posted a link to this 1957 letter (from J. D. Salinger) on Twitter. (BTW, you can find me on Twitter here, although only about 20% of my tweets are estate planning or probate-related. You can find the more entertaining Mr. Ebert here.)

Anywho, the interesting thing (to me as a probate attorney, at least) is this part of the letter:

I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights [to The Catcher in the Rye] to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won't have to see the results of the transaction.

So, Mr. Salinger might leave it up to his family to decide if a play or film will be made from his most famous work. I wonder if his opinion on this has changed over the last 52 years?

Two final notes:

1. The letter is evidently for sale now. Asking price: $54,000!

2. The website on which the letter is featured (Letters of Note) is a real gem.

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).