By Rania Combs
April 21st, 2010
Wacky Wednesday: Wills That Make You Go “Hmmm…”
Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara
If you had no family and few friends, how would you want your assets distributed when you die? Would you leave your estate to charity? Would you consider leaving everything to complete strangers?
In 1988, thirteen years before he died of natural causes, Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara, a wealthy Portuguese bachelor, signed an unusual will. He had no children and very few friends. So he bequeathed his fortune to 70 strangers whom he randomly selected from the Lisbon telephone directory.
When his heirs were notified of their inheritance, most believed they were being scammed…
Why not just give your fortune to random strangers? That’s exactly what Portuguese aristocrat Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara did in his Will. For reasons known only to him, de Noronha Cabral da Camara randomly chose 70 strangers out of a Lisbon phone directory and left his sizeable fortune to them. “I thought it was some kind of cruel joke,” a 70-year-old heiress told Portugal’s Sol newspaper. “I’d never heard of the man.
Collins Law Group
