This 2019 post, https://pickledgizzards.com/aunty-myrtles-mouldy-cake/ features one of my mother’s aunts, Myrtle (her actual name) She passed away at least 45 years ago, having produced no direct descendants, so for reasons which will gradually become clear I will not identify her further.
Although Myrtle had no children herself, she was from a large family and most of her siblings married and produced several children of my mother’s generation, so she had many nephews and nieces, a couple of whom were lost in WWII. All her life Myrtle took a keen interest in all those nieces and nephews and their children, so by late in her life there would have been at least 35-40 people still living who she named in her will, including all the great nieces and great nephews of my baby boomer generation.
She was well into her 90s and by the time she passed away in 1978, at which time Mike and I and our two were living up in the Northern Territory, during what I call our Tent Period (go to glossary) Although I only met Auntie Myrtle a handful of times in my life, after her death, my sisters and I, all our cousins on that side, plus Mum and all her generation of the family, each received an allotment of shares from her estate. My sisters’ and my share parcels were much smaller than Mum received, but still marvelous, because I remember at the time my good solid industrials were valued at about $5000. I held on to them for 5+ years, reinvesting the dividends until a time when I needed a some money for a purpose that I felt sure she’d approve of, and was very grateful for her generosity, as indeed I still am.
Mum’s brother-in-law, Uncle Jack, was an accountant, and a conservative bricks and mortar investor himself. Myrtle married young but her husband died after only 2 years, before they’d produced any family, and she never remarried. Her late husband had been wealthy, and the young widow, Myrtle, was no doubt glad of Jack’s investment advice, but she was very astute in her own right, too. According to Mum, Jack always helped her prepare her tax filings and apparently never billed her for that, nor the investment advice he’d given her although he was not a licensed investment advisor. Within families, older family members often advise younger less experienced family members – it’s just something that many families do between themselves. At the time of her death in 1978, Myrtle’s commercial property portfolio was worth a very impressive $2+m, possibly in part to Jack’s helpful advice.
About 6 months before Myrtle died, and in sound physical and mental health, she’d had her solicitor draw up a new will, specifying bequests to all her nieces and nephews and all their children, naming every one of us; and leaving the remainder of her assets (ie. about 90%) to the man we refer to as Auntie Myrtle’s Last Gigolo.
I don’t know much about her gigolos, except that Mum told us that periodically Myrtle would have around her a regular male friend or escort, because she loved to attend and bet at all the horse and dog racing tracks, venues which no respectable woman would attend without a gentleman escort. Mum and I presumed she had some business arrangement with those escorts, several of whom accompanied her for years apparently. It is known that the man we refer to as Myrtle’s Last Gigolo was a married man with wife and children all living just a couple of suburbs away from Myrtle’s home.
Auntie Myrtle didn’t leave anything to Uncle Jack himself, and it is an understatement to say he was highly offended and furious, and I can’t way whether that was reasnable or not, as we really don’t know whether Jack did or didn’t bill her for the annual preparation of her tax filings, and if he did, perhaps she paid him and regarded their relationship as solely transactional. After all, he was only married to her niece, and wasn’t a licensed investment advisor either, but we lived interstate and I never observed them together.
On legal advice Uncle Jack contested the will in the State’s Supreme court which denied his claim, because Myrtle had identified and named every blood connection in her family who might have had any claim to an inheritance, and had made some provision for every one of us. That unsuccessful challenge must have cost Uncle Jack a heap.
Myrtle was just one of Mum’s colourful rellies, and Mike says I should write ‘a Great Australian Novel’ based on her and more of the colour on Mum’s side of the family. While I might never get around to that, what I would like to do as an intermediate step is write a series of short stories, including the family drama of Myrtle’s Last Will and Testament, as it was an amazing document that stirred up an emotional, legal and financial hornets’ nest in my mother’s corner of the family, but some of the other descendents might have been stirred up too!
In both Mike’s and my families there have been a couple of other interesting or even dreadful ‘last testament and will’ stories, and I’m sure there are in many other families, too…. so I’m going to put out a call on my social media and close contact lists to see if I can get some interesting outlines of dreadful or marvelous wills around which to build a series of short stories.
(Please feel free to leave a question or comment, below, or email me directly)