Loading
But here’s the problem, says Fisher: “The family members who might hope to benefit from the trust property are not legally its owners.”
Derwent Coshott, a Sydney university academic and a specialist in family trusts, says these arrangements are all about trying to save the legacy. He reminds me that at the very beginning of Downton Abbey, we see bickering over who is going to inherit what and when.
“In terms of succession planning, the idea is to ensure the way you want to do things will continue after you die,” he says.
He probably means Succession planning, but we get it.
“It’s called the ‘dead hand’. The idea is that it will be passed on to Lachlan and the Murdoch legacy will continue.”
Yep, that cold dead hand will continue long after Murdoch shuffles off and has a thousand very positive obituaries posted on his thousands of media outlets.
Is this just a weird anomaly among the very, very rich? Barnett says no: “These cases happen more often than you’d think.”
She tells the story of one of the most famous of trust cases, Re Gulbenkian, studied by all students across the common law. It began exactly from this kind of dispute. Sarkis Gulbenkian, a reclusive and miserly millionaire created a trust for his son Nubar Gulbenkian. Nubar was a well-known bon vivant who was as profligate as his father was miserly, but equally canny with business deals.
They had a falling out when Nubar (who was working for his father for free) asked his father to pay a few dollars to cover the chicken and tarragon jelly with asparagus tips he’d had for lunch. When his father refused to pay, Nubar sued him, and Sarkis retaliated by cutting Nubar out of the trust. Nubar sued him again for this (and received a settlement).
Loading
The outcomes are often financial settlements between family members (that’s what Nubar Gulbenkian did, and also what Hope Rinehart Welker has done with her mother), says Barnett. But these disputes often reflect other emotional tensions in the family, just as with wills, so resolutions are not always possible.
Barnett says here there is a clear preference for Lachlan Murdoch, and an estrangement of the other children.
“That may add fuel to the fire of a dispute,” she says.
Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter.
