Posts Tagged ‘inheritance’
$9 billion succession war clouds over funeral of Sai Baba
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Politicians, Bollywood figures and other mourners paid homage to Indian holy man Sathya Sai Baba Monday amid fears of a fight over his $9 billion trust legacy.
The spiritual leader’s body lay in an air-conditioned glass casket with gold plating in the main meditation hall of his Prasanthi Nilayam ashram to let the expected hundreds of thousands of followers pay their last respects, officials said.
Sai Baba, 84, died Sunday of multiple organ failure in a hospital near the south Indian ashram…
Giant screens placed near the ashram gates projected images of his body, evoking cheers and tears among the people waiting to get inside, The Indian Express reported.
Sai Baba was known for conjuring jewelry, food and vibhuti, or sacred ash, out of the air, which devotees saw as proof of his powers and skeptics called sleight of hand.
His gentle demeanor, Afro-style hair and embrace of many belief systems beyond his eclectic blend of Hindu and Muslim beliefs attracted an estimated 6 million active and 33 million passive followers, including former presidents, generals, film-industry luminaries and sports stars. His Sathya Sai Organization, which seeks to help people recognize the divinity within them, maintains more than 1,200 Sathya Sai Baba Centers in 130 countries worldwide…
Sai Baba left no trust heir, raising fears of a custodial “succession war” over who would now manage the $9 billion.
He left enough money behind to fund a small country. Who knows where it will go, now?
Bobby Fischer’s widow may have his money. Well, that took long enough.
“Does this mean I get to stay buried– finally?”
A long fight over the estate of the chess champion Bobby Fischer appears to have reached its endgame, with a court ruling that a Japanese woman is indeed his widow and heir.
A district court in Iceland, where Mr. Fischer spent the last years of his life, ruled Wednesday that Miyoko Watai, a pharmacist and the president of the Japan Chess Association, had been married to Mr. Fischer and was therefore entitled to inherit his estate. Mr. Fischer, who died in January 2008, left no will; his estate is said to be worth about $2 million.
Mr. Fischer’s nephews, Alexander and Nicholas Targ, who also filed a claim to the estate, plan to appeal the ruling….
After Mr. Fischer’s death, a protracted legal battle erupted over his estate. In addition to Ms. Watai and the Targ brothers, a Filipino woman named Marilyn Young also laid claim to the estate, saying that her daughter, Jinky, was Mr. Fischer’s child.
To test that claim, last summer Mr. Fischer’s body was exhumed and a paternity test conducted. It came back negative.
Ms. Watai seems to me actually to have had Fischer’s interest at heart. She understood that it is humane to make allowances for a precariously balanced genius, and proper considering his many contributions to a multitude of people all over the world.
Body at centre of inheritance row – goes missing!
Wealthy Spanish timber trader Crisanto López was good at both business and seduction. On his death he left behind not just a fortune valued at €12m but three legitimate daughters and, possibly, one or two illegitimate children.
In a country where offspring cannot be disinherited, his death seemed bound to lead to squabbles over his fortune but no one expected it would end with Crisanto’s corpse disappearing from the cemetery in Cee, north-west Spain, where it was laid two years ago.
When Spanish police opened the niche where he was buried in order to take DNA tests that would help identify his offspring, however, Crisanto’s body had vanished.
A fresh silicone seal had been used to glue back the carved granite stone that covered the niche, suggesting the corpse has only recently been stolen.
Now investigators are busy trying to work out who pinched the body, which they believe must have been taken in the past fortnight…
“I can’t imagine that they have taken the body far,” local parish priest Manuelo Vázquez told El País . “I think it must be in the niche above or below. It would be too big a job to move it elsewhere.”
Police apparently agree…They are waiting for permission to open a couple of nearby niches where the silicone seal also looks suspiciously new.
Har! Good at least for a zombie movie remake.
