As shocking as they come, the news of the late legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfield leaving a huge fortune to his beloved cat has left the world in ablaze.
French newspaper Le Figaro said, the German creative director of Chanel who passed away on Tuesday (19.02.19) at the age of 85 could have his entire multi-million pound fortune handed over to his Birman feline under German law, providing she had been nominated as his “heir” through an association or foundation.
The case of a cat inheriting a fortune as other people suffer from poverty is surprisingly one of the many weird inheritance stories around the world as revealed by a spot check on the internet. Here is a list of some of the most surprising inheritance stories:
Dog inherited $12 million from New York hotelier
New York hotelier and real estate billionaire Leona Helmsley (called the Queen of Mean) left $12m (£5.97m) to her pet dog, Trouble. The pampered pooch received the largest bequest from Mrs. Helmsley’s will while some human members of Mrs. Helmsley’s family fared less well, with two of her four grandchildren cut out of the will entirely. The money for Trouble’s upkeep was left in the hands of her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who inherited $10m himself.
The richest woman in Asia leaves a fortune to a feng shui master
Nina Wang, who died of cancer in 2007 at age 69, signed over her vast fortune to a previously unknown feng shui master Tony Chan as a promise for eternal life. According to Oddee, Wang changed her will in 2006 in order to leave everything to the feng shui master, voiding a previous will written four years earlier that left the fortune to her family and to charity. With no children of her own, Wang wrote a new will in 2006, two years after her ovarian cancer was diagnosed, making 48-year-old Chan her sole beneficiary.
A Portuguese Aristocrat left his money to strangers from a phone directory
Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara made an unusual distribution of his money after his death: 70 people listed in a Lisbon phone directory were contacted out of the blue after his death to be told he had made them his beneficiaries. They had been chosen at random from the directory, in front of two witnesses at a registry office 13 years before. It certainly came as a shock to them as people do not, as a rule, make wills in Portugal and why from a phone directory.
These are just a few of the many cases around the world, who would you leave your fortune to, a family member, stranger or a pet?