After 92 years, millionaire miser’s heirs finally split $100M

In 1919, he was a greedy multimillionaire who didn’t want to see his family get its hands on the vast fortune he’d amassed as a lumber baron.
But in 2011, Wellington R. Burt is the sort of generous benefactor who usually exists only in daydreams — the long-lost relative you never met who leaves you millions of dollars.
With the conditions of a strange will — which barred any money from his estate being distributed until 21 years after the death of his last grandchild — having been met, 12 of Burt’s descendants split a fortune estimated at about $100 million. By 5 p.m. on Monday, each of those 12 became instant millionaires after Saginaw, Mich., County Chief Probate Judge Patrick McGraw ordered full distribution of the estate by that deadline. 
It took 20 attorneys working together to get it done, and Citizens Bank Wealth Management, the estate’s trustee, paid out the fortune on Monday.
The lucky dozen When Burt died in Saginaw in March 1919 at the age of 87, he was one of the eight richest men in America, as well as a former mayor of the city and Michigan state senator. Most likely as a result of a family conflict at the time, he did not want to leave any substantial amount of his money to his immediate family — so he made his strange stipulation when he hand-wrote his will in 1917.
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His last grandchild died in 1989, but it wasn’t until 2010 that a group of Burt’s descendants began the legal proceedings to reach an agreement to disburse his fortune. Thirty of them applied to claim a piece of that pile of money, but genealogical research whittled them down to the lucky group of 12.

The recipients range in age from 19 to 94 years old, and live in eight different states; only one lives in Michigan. The lucky dozen have succeeded where six children, seven grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren could not. That group either was banned from receiving a large inheritance by Burt’s will, or died in the 92-year waiting period before an agreement was finally reached