Although he was once the nation's top judge, Warren Burger prepared a "woefully inadequate" will that could cost his heirs up to one-quarter of his $1.8 million estate.
It appears the former chief justice, who retired from the Supreme Court in 1986 and died last June at age 87, typed the one-page will so hastily that he even misspelled "exeuctors" once."This really is a sad example," Arlington, Va., lawyer George W. Dodge said Tuesday. "Burger's estate of $1.8 million may face federal and state taxes of over $450,000. He possibly could have avoided all that."
The legal snare is a cautionary tale for those Americans who have avoided proper estate planning.
Just after his wife died in 1994, Burger used a computer to write the will, leaving one-third of his estate to his daughter, Margaret, and two-thirds to his son, Wade.
The document did not grant the two executors any power to sell Burger's real estate. "That omission means they need a probate court's permission to dispose of the property. We're talking about unnecessary attorney fees and court costs," Dodge told The Associated Press.
In an article published in the Arlington County Bar Association Journal, Dodge called the will woefully inadequate.
Burger also did not protect his heirs from estate taxes. Dodge, assisted by the accounting firm of Murray, Jonson, White & Associates, estimated the federal estate taxes may be as high as $378,000 and Virginia's estate-tax bite as much as $78,000.
"If proper estate planning measures had been taken, it's possible there would be no estate taxes due," Dodge said.
How much would such estate planning have cost? Dodge said a large Virginia law firm probably would have charged Burger $2,000.
Most Americans might not need such help because the federal estate tax exempts up to $600,000 in assets and many state tax schemes mirror that exemption.
"But virtually everyone needs a will," Dodge said. "It lets you control and direct where your assets go - to your spouse, children, charities."
The will and probate record of the former chief justice, a man who zealously guarded his privacy, is open for public scrutiny at the Arlington County Courthouse, in Deed Book 196, page 96.
A lawyer familiar with Virginia probate law could have told Burger how to keep the whole thing out of the public record.