Column Chronicles: Add a Testament to your Last Will

Add a Testament to your Last Will

Frank Cotolo
January 1, 2015

In an entry last year I promised to address the part of a written Will called the Testament. This part of the written Will is why the written Will is fully called a Last Will and Testament. What I forgot to mention was that the "Last" Will is the most important draft of Will writing, since editing a Will after your demise is not just highly unlikely but merely impossible.

As I mentioned about a Testament in a Last Will, it is a document that allows you to express the most god-awful things about people you hated when you were alive. Most likely, these types won't appear anywhere else in the Will, unless you are leaving them a possession of some kind.

A Testament is also a final statement and in a final statement you can finally express things about your life and times, as well as people, in as many words as you like. That's correct; there is no limit to the length of a Testament. Throughout history, there have been voluminous Testaments by famous and unknown people.

A former Major League Baseball umpire named Wally Stintz holds the record for the length of a Testament. It was 15 volumes at 500 pages per volume. Mr. Stintz categorized the volumes in alphabetical order, wanting to prove once and for all that he had memorized most of an encyclopedia he owned.

So your Testament's contents could include anything you would like. Usually, the executor of the Will reads the Testament at the official reading of the Will, after the list of possessions is read. With any luck, one or two people will stick around and listen to the executor read your Testament. With a lot of luck, your executor will stick around to read it all and not use phrases like, "et cetera" and "so on and so forth." If you are smart, you will put into your Will a stipulation that no one gets anything you have bequeathed to them unless they stay around and listen to the executor read the entire Testament.

You can always change your Testament if you live. Many people change their minds about what they have written, especially if their lives go on for a long time after they wrote their Testament. Lives that go on for a long time may include new thoughts, feelings and philosophies that negate what was written in the first place.

If you hated an aunt, for instance, and wrote in your Testament that she was a vile wench, a wicked lady that often struck you with a strap of jingle bells, and then you outlived her only to find that in her Will she left you many thousands of dollars, you can go back and say she was an angel in disguise.

Do yourself a favor and write a Testament to your Last Will. You won't live to be glad you did but someone around you may find it inspiring and lead a strong, productive life because you took the time to express yourself.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.