FOX:  “Walt Disney World and Disneyland have allegedly been outed as one of the most popular places for families to scatter their loved one's ashes. According to The Wall Street Journal, custodians at the famous theme parks are claiming that not only do guests bring their family’s ashes to scatter – they do so often enough to prompt a special code word for it: HEPA cleanup, referring to an ultrafine vacuum cleaner.”

Fox:  “A bride-to-be in England is having a difficult time finding a dressmaker willing to create her dream wedding dress that she'd like to be festooned with locks of her dead mother's hair, reports said. The woman made a sketch of the floor-length ball gown and requested that “the bodice around the midsection of the dress to have a lacy, floral design made with the hair.”

Bloomberg:  “A Russian billionaire fighting one of the largest divorce payouts in U.K. history lost a Moscow court case where he was trying to prove that his marriage had been dissolved 16 years earlier. Farkhad Akhmedov was ordered to pay his wife Tatiana Akhmedova more than 450 million pounds ($586 million) following a London trial that he refused to participate in on the grounds that he was already divorced in Russia. Now the Moscow City Court has rejected an appeal by the businessman seeking to prove the existence of that divorce.”

BBC:  “A man in China whose wife killed herself and their two children after he allegedly faked his own death for an insurance payout has given himself up to police. The 34-year-old was presumed dead after a car he borrowed was found in a river, though his body was never recovered. He did not tell his wife his alleged plan and she believed he had died. She drowned herself and their children three weeks later, after posting a suicide note online. The man, who police said was surnamed He, turned himself in to police in Xinhua county in Hunan province last Friday.”

The Guardian:  “Rupert Murdoch’s six children could each receive as much as $2bn (£1.5bn) from the sale of his 21st Century Fox global entertainment empire to Disney. Murdoch is in the final stages of completing the $71.3bn sale of 21st Century Fox, which includes the Hollywood studio behind hits from Deadpool to X-Men and a 39% stake in Sky. The family trust, which the 87-year old Murdoch controls, owns a 17% stake in Fox worth a little over $12bn. The beneficiaries of the trust, in which Murdoch has no financial interest, are his children Prudence, James, Lachlan and Elisabeth. Grace and Chloe, his daughters with his former wife Wendi Deng Murdoch, whom he divorced five years ago, are also beneficiaries but have no voting interest

Financial Advisor:  “Paul Allen’s family office will live long and prosper. The billionaire’s vast holdings at Vulcan Inc. — with real estate, art, sports teams and venture capital stakes — would take years to unravel, if that’s even what he wanted. Allen, who died Monday, had no spouse or children to divide his empire. But there are many others with interests at stake, including family, staff and charities, as well as potential investors eager to snap up pieces.”

Time Magazine:  “A high school student mixed her cremated grandfather’s ashes into homemade sugar cookies and shared them with several classmates, police in Northern California said Wednesday. The student and a friend baked the cookies and shared them with at least nine classmates at their public charter high school near Sacramento on Oct. 4, said Davis Police Lt. Paul Doroshov. He said the Da Vinci Charter Academy students told some of their classmates that the cookies contained human ashes.”

Moneyweb:  “The increased Value-Added Tax (VAT) rate – announced in the 2018 National Budget – dominated headlines for weeks thereafter, but this is not the only tax change affecting consumers and investors. Many tax changes also affect estate planning and the cost of estate administration. I asked Brenthurst’s Fiduciary Services Expert, Rozanne Heystek-Potgieter, for her top tips to navigate this. We compiled a list of six important issues to consider when navigating the complex field of deceased estate administration. More importantly, we have included tips on how to prepare for the inevitable and re-evaluate your existing will, the liquidity of your estate and estate planning goals in general.”

Elite Daily:  “The upcoming royal wedding of Princess Eugenie and long-time boyfriend Jack Brooksbank has the whole world talking, and it's for good reason. Princess Eugenie and Brooksbank are fairly low key and lead relatively normal lives compared to their fellow royal family members, which makes their love story surprisingly relatable. However, because they’re such a low-key couple, there are tons of unanswered questions about their Oct. 12 wedding. For instance, do Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank have a prenup? It’s not a totally off-base question, but it’s also sort of complicated. The soon-to-be married couple has been together seven years, but with the royal family, nothing is off the table. (Except bright nail polish, of course.) The thing is, the royal family is high-profile on a worldwide scale. They’re basically like the

FOX:  “A devout Buffalo Bills fan took one final dig at his team, requesting six players as pallbearers in his obituary this week, so that “they can let him down one last time.” Lee Merkel, 83, died on Sunday at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina, but the native New Yorker and lifelong season ticketholder wanted to ensure he got the final laugh.”

Smith Admudsen:  “You and your significant other are ready to take the next big step in your relationship: getting married. While this is an exciting event, it's also one that should prompt you and your fiancé to have some serious conversations about the legal implications of the marriage. Here are a few considerations that might help you and your partner start your marriage with clear understandings.”

Wealth Management:  “The president’s propensity for fudging the numbers runs in the family. That’s the main takeaway from The New York Times’ exhaustive look Tuesday at the myriad of methods that the president’s father, Fred Trump, used to minimize taxes while transferring his wealth—$413 million—to his children. What’s interesting is just how permissive the gift and estate tax regime is to those willing to fudge the truth, sometimes brazenly.”

Forbes:  “While the celebrity buzz of the week is that Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin were secretly married earlier this week, the even bigger news is that they may not have signed a prenuptial agreement. With Justin’s net worth estimated at $265 million and Hailey’s at $2 million, that's a tremendous imbalance of wealth. Depending on how the marriage turns out, this could result in a big payday for Hailey down the road. While Justin and Hailey may be young and in love – and throwing all caution to the wind – no one with any substantial assets should follow their lead. Here are 10 things every person should know about prenuptial agreements.”

The Telegraph:  “An American couple have lost their bid to win back a painting by Impressionist master Camille Pissarro, as a French court confirmed it must be handed to the family of the Jewish collector it was looted from during the Second World War. Wealthy art collectors Bruce and Robbi Toll had launched an appeal after a court ruled in November that the painting belonged by rights to the descendants of Simon Bauer, a Jewish businessman disappropriated by the Nazis in 1943. The Tolls insisted they had no idea the painting, “La Cueillette” (“Picking Peas”), had been looted when they bought it at Christie's in New York in 1995 for $800,000 (£616,000). But the Paris appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the original court decision stood, in a move hailed

Forbes:  “Estate planning is easy. It’s finite, calculable. What happens when you die? Who gets your stuff? How much will you owe in estate taxes and how can we prevent or prepare for it? You hire a lawyer to draft a will and possibly one or more trusts that provide for what happens when you die. It’s done. Complete. You tuck your documents away in drawer or safety deposit box and sleep well at night, knowing you have taken care of your estate plan. Death is inevitable, so planning for it—while admittedly uncomfortable for some—is relatively easy. Life, on the other hand, is hard.”

Forbes:  “One difficult financial task facing a surviving spouse is how to handle the individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and other qualified retirement plans. Mistakes often are made with inherited IRAs in general, whether they are inherited by spouses, children or others. Retirement accounts are treated differently than most other assets in the estate. The rules for inherited IRAs aren’t intuitive or simple, so mistakes are made. Surviving spouses have the same options with inherited IRAs as other beneficiaries. But there’s a twist to one of them, and the surviving spouse has an additional option.”

The Globe and Mail:  “If only half of Canadians have a will and only about a third of them are up-to-date, according to a recent poll, it’s likely even fewer Canadians have accounted for the growing number of digital assets in their estate plans. Many Canadians have trouble keeping track of all of their online assets – which includes everything from cryptocurrencies to eBay and PayPal accounts to loyalty reward programs and social-media sites – let alone figuring out how to distribute them among their beneficiaries when they die. Wealth-management experts warn that overlooking digital assets in estate planning can create huge headaches down the road for executors, powers of attorney and beneficiaries, especially given Canadians’ expanding digital footprints.”

Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog:  “Estate and guardianship proceeding are in rem and decisions are binding on the world, often without personal service or direct notice. Error correction in probate is essential because incorrect decisions can adversely affect administrations for years in the future. The Texas state legislature recognizes the importance of inheritance and guardianship and progressively expanded probate jurisdiction, including granting statutory probate courts exclusive jurisdiction over probate matters, and concurrent jurisdiction with district courts over trust and other matters. Statutory probate courts even have the power to transfer cases in other courts in other courts around the state to their own court when the proceeding affects a pending administration – the power affectionately known by practitioners as the “reach-out-and-grab” power. The legislature and courts

Fox:  “A 66-year-old U.S. Navy veteran dying from cancer has been selling his possessions at weekend yard sales to raise money for his own funeral, reports said Wednesday. Willie Davis, of Cambria County, Pa., was diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma. He plans to raise enough cash to be buried next to his parents in Culpepper, Va., according to his GoFundMe page. The page was created by two men, David Dunkleberger and his friend, Ed Sheets, after visiting Davis’ yard sale in Brownstown, Pa., in August. When they asked whose funeral Davis was financing, he replied: “Mine.”