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A silly hypothetical situation, loosely based in reality.
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Started by shadroch,

56 posts in this topic

kav

kav

Posted
Posted
50 minutes ago, 01TheDude said:

I would assume most of the nieces and nephews were getting up there in age in general. Best solution is to be fair to ALL--- liquidate/or share all the assets (in case some items are also family treasures) equally.

From a legal standpoint-- I suppose people could start fighting over this stuff but it seems like the second you get more lawyers involved, only the lawyers win.

The famous lawsuit over the song "Land Down Under" where the plaintiff claimed he had rights to the melody of the flute segment-if I remember correctly both sides spent about 4 million on the suit, and the plaintiff was awarded 100,000 which was 5% of royalties from 2002.  Who won?  the lawyers.

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kav

kav

Posted
Posted

Just dont tug of war the books and rip back cover in half like the Action #1 found in a wall.

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kav

kav

Posted
Posted

Jimmy doesnt like misunderstandings.  Jimmy and misunderstandings-kinda clash.
Yarn | Jimmy doesn't like misunderstandings. ~ Seinfeld (1989 ...

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littledoom

littledoom

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, shadroch said:

Jimmy Collins was born in  July 1954.  In the summer of 1962, he had the mumps and his birthday party was canceled.

Fast forward to 2019. His God-Mother passes away, having named Jimmy to be her executor. She has no children and leaves her estate in equal parts to her six nephews.

It's fairly modest, a $200,000 house and a couple small bank accounts. 

While cleaning out the house and going through his Aunts things, he finds a plain paper bag and inside it are eight comic books and a birthday card made out to him, dated July 1962. It's from the cancelled birthday party.

Two of the cousins are there helping out and everyone gets a kick out of Jimmy finding such a blast from the past and without dissent agree it belongs to Jimmy.

Jimmy takes the bag home and shows it to his family and his oldest sons eyes pop out. The first book is Journey Into Mystery 83, but the second is Amazing Fantasy 15.  A quick computer search shows the books might be worth $300,000.

The books were clearly bought as a gift for Jimmy ,but are they his or his Aunts. Did the two cousins who gave their consent to Jimmy taking them lose their rights to the books, if they ever had any.

Do you think the final legal fight over the books will exceed the value of the books?

Finders keepers? "family" right?

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ADAMANTIUM

ADAMANTIUM

Posted
Posted
35 minutes ago, kav said:

Jimmy doesnt like misunderstandings.  Jimmy and misunderstandings-kinda clash.
Yarn | Jimmy doesn't like misunderstandings. ~ Seinfeld (1989 ...

That episode came on last night too, cause Jimmy likes an AF#15, dontchaknow :takeit:

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1Cool

1Cool

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, shadroch said:

Jimmy Collins was born in  July 1954.  In the summer of 1962, he had the mumps and his birthday party was canceled.

Fast forward to 2019. His God-Mother passes away, having named Jimmy to be her executor. She has no children and leaves her estate in equal parts to her six nephews.

It's fairly modest, a $200,000 house and a couple small bank accounts. 

While cleaning out the house and going through his Aunts things, he finds a plain paper bag and inside it are eight comic books and a birthday card made out to him, dated July 1962. It's from the cancelled birthday party.

Two of the cousins are there helping out and everyone gets a kick out of Jimmy finding such a blast from the past and without dissent agree it belongs to Jimmy.

Jimmy takes the bag home and shows it to his family and his oldest sons eyes pop out. The first book is Journey Into Mystery 83, but the second is Amazing Fantasy 15.  A quick computer search shows the books might be worth $300,000.

The books were clearly bought as a gift for Jimmy ,but are they his or his Aunts. Did the two cousins who gave their consent to Jimmy taking them lose their rights to the books, if they ever had any.

Do you think the final legal fight over the books will exceed the value of the books?

Sounds like the bag wasn't opened in front of the cousins so the content of the bag could have easily been a batch of Richie Rich or Ducks.  From a good karma stand point it would be good for Jimmy to tell everyone what happened and take his piece of the $300K.  I'd hope I'd go that route but if the card was to me and it feels like karma is righting a wrong (missed party) I'd just grade the books and give some awesome Christmas gifts to the family this year.

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SeniorSurfer

SeniorSurfer

Posted
Posted

As a collector and needing both those books it would be a tough call to 'fess up, call the cousins, then split the wad.  Especially after the card was addressed to me to begin with and, anyway, who in their family really likes 5 out of 5 cousins so much they would pony up the proceeds of your gift?

In the real world (actually in the real world Jimmy might not know too much about comics but...) as executor, and having had some first-hand experience observing the process, you have to declare them since they were not specifically stated in the will/trust to someone.  Having said that, the executor does not have the authority to pull from shares to be distributed for the funds it would take to have them graded and slabbed (it can run into some $ as we all know, being a % of FMV).  Not sure of the collectibles scenario here, but the two ways I can think of doing this is:  1)  I be the nice guy, pay for them all to be graded/slabbed out of my own pocket - keeping a scrupulous accounting - then sending them off to auction with everyone getting their share after I get repaid and the auction house takes their cut.  All cousins would love this since it's just basically sitting back and reaping more profit without any risks.  Or, there is 2)  I declare that the books are worth a pile and the best way to determine their value is to grade/slab/auction, but it will cost some dough.  There is usually an amount in escrow that can be spent for later unpaid bills, fees, etc. (to be distributed equally to all involved after everything is clearly paid, usually after a few months) and all would have to agree to use some of those funds (I'm a little fuzzy on this part as the executor can ask the escrow lawyer to write the check but if you're wrong and money is wasted, you'll have 5 other people with their own lawyers demanding you reimburse the account).  If you don't want to participate in your 1/6 share of the costs, the lawyer holding the money would have to write up something to this effect and you wouldn't get your 1/6 of the potential profit when everything is sold.  Probably wouldn't lose anyone in this scenario either unless you make some anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night to scare a few cousins off ("I heard aunt Ethel wanted to make the books look cleaner so she colored in the creases and trimmed off some rough edges").

Obviously I spent way too much time thinking about this, but after the shenanigans I saw from people who turned like wild African pygmies when money was involved... 

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comicginger1789

comicginger1789

Posted
Posted

Does Jimmy care for comics? If not, sell em and tell the cousing nuthin! After all, what kind of crappy Aunt doesn't give him his present later anyway?

If Jimmy does care for comics, he just keeps those suckers. Either way, Jimmy is the winner! Cousins said to take it anyways.

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wilbil

wilbil

Posted
Posted

i am the attorney for the godmother. i distinctly recall she said jimmy didn't want the damm comics because they were not what he liked, so she put them in a paper bag and wrote on the bag "save for future nieces and nephews".

jimmy changed the bag. i want a forensic analysis of the age of the paper and fingerprints.

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