BRING ME A PEN AND PAPER!

(Deathbed Wills)

          Writing a Will on one’s death bed is often featured in the movies, but is a bad idea in real life.  In “Power of the Press”, a 1943 film written by Samuel Fuller, the publisher of a New York newspaper, is stricken with remorse after a long time friend’s editorial lambasts the muckraking journalism of his newspaper.  He decides to force out the managing editor who is leading the newspaper astray.  However, the managing editor has the publisher assassinated as he begins a major speech to outline the new change in policy.

            While the publisher is lying on his deathbed, he summons his trusted secretary to bring him a piece of paper and a pen and he writes out a Will leaving his controlling interest in the newspaper to his old friend who had criticized him.  That old friend was running a small town weekly newspaper in Nebraska.  The intrepid secretary tracks him down and brings him back to New York to confront the ruthless editor.  They show the editor the handwritten Will.  At first, he permits the reformist to have the illusion of control, but as real changes are attempted, he obtains a court injunction declaring the handwritten Will to be void.  The small town newspaper man and the secretary do not have the funds to fight this injunction, so other tactics are required.

            This movie is more well known for its somewhat preachy (remember this was war time) defense of freedom of the press.  The estate planning lesson is that in the movies, as in real life, a deathbed Will is not the best planning tool.