Dads May Hatch Schemes to Leave Golden Nest Eggs

From King Lear to Tom Daschle, a father’s desire to provide for his children could leave them with a rather dubious inheritance—“a legacy of embarrassment,” Stephen Amidon writes in the New York Times. "Inheritances can be tricky things. Even those given with the best of intentions can often go awry," he notes, while he acknowledges considering less-than-ethical maneuvers himself.

But a fat inheritance isn’t always constructive, Amidon adds, citing parents who’ve “harmed” their children “by installing an express escalator on the uphill sections of their lives.” All Amidon’s father left him was a hairbrush—and his good name: “Looking at some of the shamelessly greedy men he worked with, it is an inheritance I am happy to have.”
(More inheritance stories.)