9 Weird Celebrity Wills Revealed

The singer who topped the charts with such hits as “Son of a Preacher Man” and “I Only Want to Be With You” succumbed to breast cancer at the far-too-young age of 59 in 1999. In her will, Springfield left a whopping $12 million to her cat, Nicholas, along with some very specific instructions. Among them: the cat was to be fed “baby food especially imported to Britain from the United States,” would be housed in a “seven-foot indoor tree house lined with scratch pads and catnip,” and would sleep on a bed “lined with the pillowcase Dusty rested on and the nightgown she wore when she died.” In addition, the fortunate feline would be “serenaded to sleep each night by a stereo system playing his master’s greatest pop hits.”

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When Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry passed away in 1991, his will contained an unusual stipulation: that his cremated remains be blasted in a rocket to “the final frontier.” In 1997, his wishes were finally fulfilled when Roddenberry's ashes were sent to outer space aboard a rocket by a company that specializes in space burials.

When she died at age 87 in 2007, hotel mogul Leona Helmsley — whom the press nicknamed the “Queen of Mean” — left a $4 billion fortune, $12 million of which was left to her dog, an eight-year-old Maltese named Trouble. She also left $5 million trusts to her two grandsons, but there was a catch: they’d only be paid if they visited the grave of their father once a year; if either grandson failed to do that, the will insisted that he would then be treated as if he “had then died.”

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One of America’s most beloved comedians for decades, Jack Benny, left his widow a sweet surprise when he shuffled off this mortal coil in 1974 at age 80. After his death, for the rest of her life Benny's widow received a weekly delivery of a single red rose, part of a condition laid out in his will.

Singer Janis Joplin left the planet far too early when she died of an accidental overdose in 1970 at age 27. In her will, Joplin set aside $2,500 to be used to throw a party in her honour, described in the will as “a final gesture of appreciation and farewell.” By all reports, the party was a rager.

SEE ALSO: The most outrageous gifts celebrities have given each other.

While not an official part of his will, rapper Tupac Shakur had a request for his friends in the event of his death (which occurred in 1996 when he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting). The posthumous request was contained within the lyrics of his song “Black Jesus” describing his “last wishes… smoke my ashes.” While it’s debatable whether or not he was serious, a member of his group, The Outlawz, revealed that “we took it serious.” At a gathering in his honour, the late rapper’s ashes were rolled into a marijuana joint and smoked by his friends.

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In his heyday in the 1930s and ‘40s, Mickey Rooney was Hollywood’s highest-paid actor, appearing alongside Judy Garland in countless Andy Hardy movies. When he died in 2014 at 93, he left behind an estate valued at just $18,000. Despite the meager amount, the lawsuits flew after his will was read, in which Rooney left everything to a stepson — and nothing to his wife and other children, which he had “intentionally omitted.” His reasoning: they were all financially better off than that stepson, and figured he could use the money more.

When she died of an accidental overdose at age 36 in 1962, Marilyn Monroe left chunks of cash to various friends and relatives, and divided up the rest of her estate — which included all her personal effects — to her psychoanalyst (who received 25 per cent) and her acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who inherited the rest, with no provisions. All her stuff reportedly sat in Strasberg’s basement until his death, when it all went to his widow, Anna Strasberg. Unlike her late husband, she decided to cash in on all that memorabilia, auctioning off items such as the dress Monroe wore to JFK’s inauguration, which fetched a cool million. Strasberg later sold the remainder of the estate for an estimated $50 million.

RELATED: 13 haunted hotels you can still stay in (including The Hollywood Roosevelt where Monroe used to chill).

Robin Williams got into a public feud with Disney after the success of Aladdin, revealing he had been paid a mere $75,000 for a film that went on to gross hundreds of millions at the box office (he once called then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner “the eighth dwarf, Greedy”). Prior to Williams’ 2014 suicide at age 63, he had reportedly caught wind of rumours that Disney was considering using outtakes from his 1991 recording sessions in a new Aladdin movie, as the comedian’s stream-of-consciousness riffing resulted in hours of material that wasn’t used in the original film. Williams’ will, however, contained a prohibition on using that material for 25 years after his death, ultimately putting the kibosh on any Disney plans for a posthumous performance as the Genie. 

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