4 ms·
A friend of a friend married his carer or nurse instead of paying her wages. He was not expecting to live long and needed 24/7 care. It was agreed that she wou
by teruakohatu 6y ago
A friend of a friend married his carer or nurse instead of paying her wages. He was not expecting to live long and needed 24/7 care.
It was agreed that she would be written out of the will, so his children got all the inheritance which was not diluted due to years of a full time carer. She got a lifetimes worth of pension payments, in exchange for a few years work (and forgoing other romantic relationships). She lived with him so I assume her living expenses were covered.
Risky for both sides, she could contest the will or the pension provider could find a loophole or accuse her of fraud.
- seibelj 6y agoMy uncle got engaged to his carer when he had cancer, but he thought it was genuine love even though she was 20 years younger. He wound up recovering and she dumped him, and then he fell into alcoholism for a year. He did eventually pull himself out of the hole and lived another 15 years before another cancer got him.
- purplezooey 6y agoThat's quite a story. I guess you never really know when your number is up.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoI think this might also be a way for any two people, not too closely related such that the marriage is illegal, to dodge estate tax.
- stormdennis 6y agoCivil partnerships, brought in for the purpose of giving the same legal rights for gay couples as married ones had, presumably also granted these rights. Since then gay marriage has rendered these redundant for their original purpose but they still exist. Some overtly non-romantically involved, long term, co-habitees are now using civil partnerships to protect the surviving person from estate duties upon the other's death. The anomaly now is that the people have to be of the same sex and there is pressure to allow people of the opposite sex to form them.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoWhat's interesting is that this and some other loopholes could be fixed pretty well by making estate tax apply to married/partnershipped couples and also making it directly proportional to the age gap between the deceased and recipient (with appropriate tax credit measures in the opposite direction).
- stormdennis 6y agoPersonally I don't see them as loopholes, they should be brought in, in my view. I think it's awful that when two people have shared a house for as long as many married people have, can be facing homelessness for other when the "wrong" one dies.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoWhat are you talking about? Estate tax doesn't kick in until $11.8 million.
- stormdennis 6y agoI don't live in America, didn't know it was so different there, I think it's a quarter of a million here and that's if you're a child of the deceased, it's a lot worse if your unrelated
- SamReidHughes 6y agoAh. Sorry for assuming jurisdiction.
- stormdennis 6y agoNo prob, I assumed the USA had similar inheritance laws to here.
- Fezzik 6y ago
- clarkmoody 6y agoThe "line marriage" concept from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress comes to mind here.
- pembrook 6y agoThere’s no estate tax in the US anymore up to $10 million after the most recent tax bill passed. I’m not sure there’s much need to “dodge” anything anymore for 99.9% of people.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoMany states have their own inheritance taxes. For example Massachusetts taxes out of state property at an exorbitant (relative to typical tax rates on real property) rate. In practice it's basically a tax on untimely death or having a crap relationship with your heirs because anyone with a double digit number of brain cells and a functional relationship with their kids transfers the property to their heirs before death as a result.