Others are downright greedy; Indiana taxes bequests over $100,000 to kids or grandkids and anything over $500 left to, say, a sister or live-in lover.
Or, Piketty suggests, we could reinstitute the estate tax, which now applies only to bequests over $5.34 million, the top 0.1% of estates.
Charities report that executors of some estates are showing reluctance to hand over bequests until next year, while others say they are in negotiations or even litigation over planned gifts from people who died this year without adjusting their wills to take into account the one-year suspension of the estate tax.
Over 20% of bequest recipients quarrel over inheritance issues.
A mysterious bequest follows, seemingly presided over by the demented and vengeful Miss Havisham, a living ghost who celebrates her own romantic disaster, using her beautiful ward, Estella, as an instrument of revenge.
Ms. Levin, a professor of art history and American studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, said she would consider giving it to the Whitney if officials there made efforts to recover the scores of other items that Mr. Sanborn got that she says should have been turned over under the bequest.
Over all, bequest giving has more than tripled in two decades, from almost $5 billion in 1985 to more than $17 billion in 2000 (though it dropped some in 2001).
In his will he left 67 Impressionist paintings to the French state, which mulled over the bequest for two years before accepting just 38, now the core of Musée d'Orsay's Impressionist collection.
The Munnings forms part of the Chipperfield bequest to the city, over which the Tate held an advisory responsibility.
Mrs. Eisenhower has aligned herself with the staff of the library, which backs having power over important decisions -- including control over Mr. Rebozo's bequest -- removed from the Nixon family and close friends and handed over to the large board.
