Estate Planning

WILL INSTRUCTIONS RESPECTING REMAINS

By Hull and Hull LLP

Former child actor Gary Coleman died after being hospitalized earlier this week with a head injury. He was 42.

Coleman is best remembered from the sitcom Different Strokes, where he played the comical kid actor, which led him to his fame.

Unfortunately, in what appears to be a trend among popular child actors, Coleman's career all but ended with the onset of adulthood, but that did not remove Coleman from the public eye. During his adult years, Coleman was plagued with legal troubles. In 1990, Coleman sued his parents and an ex-manager for allegedly extorting him of the fortune he had earned while on Different Strokes. He was subsequently awarded $1.3 million dollars. In 2007, Coleman married his girlfriend of five months, Shannon Price. The marriage was reported as a volatile one. Both were arrested, Price in 2009, and Coleman this past January, on domestic violence charges. They even aired their grievances on Divorce Court in 2008.

Gary Coleman's alleged Last Will and Testament, dated April 5, 1999, recently surfaced. Under his Will, Gary appoints his former manager Dion Mial as his executor of his estate. What I found interesting, was under paragraph two of his Will, which states: 'I direct my personal representative to cause my personal remains to be cremated and to plan a wake for me conducted by those who have had no financial ties to me and can look each other in the eyes and say they really cared personally for Gary Coleman.'

In Ontario, as I recently indicated in a prior blog, any instructions left by the deceased respecting remains, whether in a Will or otherwise, are precatory and are not binding on the estate trustee.

Thank you for reading and have a great day.

Rick Bickhram

Full post as published by Toronto Estate Law Blog on June 14, 2010 (boomark / email).