As Bloomberg reports, however, in a recent article titled “Pledge Aside, Dead Billionaires Don’t Have to Give Away Half Their Fortune,” the language of the pledge states that it is non-binding.
There are actually good reasons for making the pledge non-binding.
The first is that if someone does not go through with the pledge, no one can sue the estate in an attempt to enforce the pledge. This is important because of the second good reason to make the pledge non-binding, which is that it is very difficult to determine what half of a billionaire’s fortune actually is.
For example, if someone has precisely one billion dollars, you might think that half is $500 million. In reality, it is $300 million because 40% of the estate will go to pay estate taxes meaning that the estate is really only $600 million not $1 billion.
If you are a billionaire, be sure to consult your estate planning attorney before signing this or any other such pledge.
