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One of my very early memories is of the reading of my grandmother's will in a cramped law office. That side of my family is Sicilian, and it was a big crowd, about sixteen aunts and uncles and some of my cousins.
It turned out that my grandmother had changed her will in her final years providing for an equal distribution of her estate among all of her children. This was a big surprise because her sons had been promised a special and more advantageous legacy. The two uncles would have gotten a two-flat income property and the six aunts would share the remainder. There was high drama involving threats to kill whomever had taken my grandmother to the lawyer's office to change her will - she was elderly, afflicted with painful arthritis that made it hard to walk, illiterate and spoke no English, and so my uncles knew that one of my aunts had helped to get the will changed. This heated exchange spilled into the outer office and then onto the street. It is quite hard to forget the memory of one's uncles threatening to kill one's aunts, especially at age 7 or 8. It was my introduction to the world of law. BTW, those uncles never found out who was responsible.
So, if there are some surprises revealed in a will, it can amount to a very dramatic scene. I suspect that this is a rare outcome and that the reading is a boring, mechanical task in most cases, with some advice given to the person who will administer the estate.
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Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue.
Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964
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