Sprinkle my ashes or else Planned Parenthood gets $50k

It's been six weeks since Bruce E. Ivins, the alledged anthrax suspect, killed himself. However, his cremated remains are still stored at a funeral home in Maryland awaiting bizarre probate proceedings.

According to The New York Times:

In a will he wrote last year, a few months before the Federal Bureau of Investigation focused the anthrax letters investigation on him, Dr. Ivins wrote of his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered. But fearing that his wife, Diane, and their two children might not honor the request, he came up with a novel way to enforce his demand: threatening to make a bequest to an organization he knew his wife opposed, Planned Parenthood.

“If my remains are not cremated and my ashes are not scattered or spread on the ground, I give to Planned Parenthood of Maryland” $50,000, Dr. Ivins wrote in the will. Court records value the estate at $143,000.

Ms. Ivins is a former president of Frederick County Right to Life, according to F.B.I. records. Bruce Ivins played keyboards at a Catholic church in Frederick and described himself in e-mail messages as “pro-life,” but he was not an anti-abortion activist, said his lawyer, Paul F. Kemp. Ms. Ivins declined to comment, Mr. Kemp said.

I'm not sure if I've ever heard of a donor who uses his/her will to encourage action by threatening to make a donation to a group that the surviving heirs hated.

I think I'm going to add an addendum to my Last Will and Testament today that my heirs need to continue this blog once I die or else...

Gay man bequeaths $65 million to LGBT groups

Ric Weiland, one of Microsoft's first five employees, has left tens of millions of dollars of his estate to a fund to benefit eleven LGBT charities. The bequest includes multi-million dollar gifts to Seattle's Pride Foundation, Lambda Legal, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The website PageOneQ reports:

The bequest, the largest ever in support of the LGBT movement, will establish a fund at the Pride Foundation in the amount of $65 million. The largest will support the foundation's grantmaking programs, an amount the Seattle Times has reported as $19 million. An additional $46 million in the fund will be distributed to national LGBT charities. The Pride Foundation provides scholarships and grants to LGBT students and organizations in the Pacific Northwest. Weiland, a Seattle resident, was a former board member and volunteer at the organization.

After the Pride Foundation grant, the second largest gift in the bequest was to Lambda Legal, an organization that seeks LGBT equality through legal work and advocacy in state and federal courts. The gift to Lambda, in excess of $10 million, like the other bequests, will be distributed over the course of eight years.

PageOneQ reports that Weiland was high school friends with Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The website also says that Weiland committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot in June of 2006 and is survived by his partner Mike Schaefer, and nieces and nephews.