Author: Karl Smallwood / Source: Today I Found Out
Jessica K. asks: Has anyone ever inherited millions of dollars from a long-lost relative they’ve never heard of like happens in movies?
If you’re like, well, pretty much everyone, at some point you’ve received an email claiming you’ve inherited a large sum of money from some person you’ve never heard of.
All you have to do to get it is provide various bits of personal data to verify you are who they think you are and, of course, your bank account information so the deceased’s crack legal team can deposit money… But has anyone ever actually received such a missive noting they’ve inherited a large sum from someone they don’t even know and had it not be a scam?It turns out, yes. Absolutely. In fact, while it’s certainly uncommon in some sense, it doesn’t take much digging at all to find a variety of known cases of this happening, and presumably there are many, many more instances that have never made the newsreels.
To start with we have the case of a man listed in the newspaper clipping describing the event called only Dr. Meszaros. The good doctor willed around $50,000 in 1930 (about $770,000 today) to an actress by the name of Corin Ward. This came as a rather large shock to the young Miss Ward who Meszaros had never bothered to even introduce himself to. Before receiving the windfall, she hadn’t even known he existed. It was presumed in the news report that Meszaros must have been in love with the beautiful actress.
Apparently a good year for actresses, or at least in this case a former actress, also in 1930 we have the case of one Lillian Malrup. Five years previous, Malrup inherited $60,000 (approximately $872,000 today) from her uncle George La’Lamontdier. Her uncle made his fortune, along with a business partner named Henri de la Salle, during the Alaskan gold rush.
Five years later, Malrup would receive an even greater windfall from her uncle’s former business partner who she’d never met and only knew of at all from a couple passing references her uncle had made in letters to her years before. How much did this mysterious business partner leave this young woman he’d never met? A whopping $700,000 (about $10.7 million today), which was no doubt a welcome thing to deposit into her account coming on the heels of the 1929 stock market crash. He left only one stipulation to her getting the money- that she set aside $100,000 (about $1.5 million today) in a trust and use the interest from that fund for scholarships for college students.
In yet another case from the early 20th century, we have the rather odd story of Archibald McArthur- a man who deserves an article of his own. But to sum up his life story for now, as a young man he moved to Dodgeville, Wisconsin, arriving with almost literally nothing but the clothes on his back and a degree from Lawrence college. On his first day in town, he worked sawing logs in exchange for a bed to sleep in that night and a hot meal.
He subsequently spent the next couple decades making a fortune, living lavishly and then, for reasons known only to him, very suddenly liquidated all his assets, became a vegetarian, grew a rather Dumbledore-esk beard, and took a vow of poverty. He lived in a shack from then on and mostly just hung out in a nearby cemetery reading philosophy books and poetry. According to a January 31, 1926 article from the Milwaukee Journal, he told people who asked that he preferred hanging out with the dead more than the living.
After a few decades living like this, at the age of 78 he seems to have felt the call all elderly feel at some point, and decided to move to Florida. He thus bought a car, drove to Florida, sold the car, and died a few years later. Beyond a few other bequests, including randomly leaving $15,000 (about $216,000 today) to the son of a woman, Mrs. Jane Joyce, whose family he’d been friends with when he was young, he left the bulk of his estate, $300,000 (about $4 million today) to a young clerk by the name of George Rafferty he once met on a park bench in Jacksonville, Florida.
Moving on we have the case of Wellington Burt, who decided not to leave the majority of his reasonably respectable fortune to his living family members, but rather to his future family. He stipulated in his will that the majority of his estate was not to be divided up until 21 years after his last grandchild died. Burt died all the way back in 1919, with his last remaining grandchild dying in 1989. When the trust was cashed out in 2010, it had grown to a whopping $110 million, which was divided up between 12 of his descendants.
In perhaps the largest sum ever inherited by someone who did not know the person who bequeathed it to them, we have the case of Zsolt and Geza Peladi, who were literally living in a cave near Budapest when they were painstakingly tracked down and then, once found, were informed they had inherited over $6 billion- yes, billion- from a grandmother they’d never met. Said Geza of this, “We…
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