BURGER WAS RIGHT

摘要

You probably read it in your newspaper and laughed a little. Chief Justice Warren Burger prepared his own will and messed it up. "It appears," Arlington, Va., attorney George Dodge wrote smugly in his county's bar-association journal, that Burger "chose not to consult an estate planning lawyer. That decision will cost his estate thousands of dollars." Burger, who died in June, left a probate estate worth $1.8 million. Dodge put the estate tax at $457,500, which could have been avoided, he says, if Burger had had a little smarts.