Our Ginsberg-Burroughs conversation concludes today with the two discussing their plans for legal arrangements and for the establishment of their respective estates.
AG: How have you disposed of your property after your death?
WSB. Pardon?
AG: How have you disposed of your property after your death?
WSB: Ah,,
AG: Mostly James?
WSB: Mostly James, yes – with , you know, at his discretion…
AG: I think I told you, I’ve left forty percent to my brother’s children,
WSB: To your what?
AG: To my brother’s children, forty percent to Peter, ten percent to Bob Rosenthal,and then little bequests of, like, a couple of thousand each to Lucien and Gregory and Steven Taylor
WSB: That sounds reasonable. Well..
AG: I may have to increase it to Bob Rosenthal
WSB: I mostly gave James sort of authority for a small bequest..
AG: Yeah
WSB: …but, well.. they’re coming at me anyway.
AG: You ought to leave a…
WSB: Pardon?
AG: Well. I’d like to leave a little for Huncke, a little for Lucien, for people that I knew a long time.
WSB: I know.
AG: Some little gift, you know.
WS: Some little.. yes. Well, that’s more or less what I’m doing, and..
AG: Do you have a.. let’s see now.. what I have from Ira Lowe, I just went down to Washington and..
WSB: Yes, I have a written will.
AG: A written will, but also another thing that he just set up for me, which was a… let’s see a…thing where it transfers it..
WS: It was a what?
AG: It transfers it over to a certain kind of estate that I control, so that it avoids being stuck in probate for a long period of time – a “Living Trust“, do you know what that is?
WSB: Yes, a trust that goes on so long as someone else is alive.
AG; You know what that is? Do you have that?
WSB: No.
AG: It’s very useful he said, because what it does is it avoids everything being held up forever in probate, or held up for a long period of time in probate, that it can be immediately acted on and disposed of, without being frozen by the courts.
WSB: Yeah.
AG: You might check that out. Who’s your lawyer?
WSB: Gene Winick
AG: Who?
WSB: Gene Winick
AG: Ask them about “Living Trust”.
WSB: He’s very good, He’s with the Gitlin firm (Ernst, Cane,Berner & Gitlin) that I have worked with for many years with very good results. Now..
AG: Because Ira Lowe just had me in Washington. We signed a thing which is a Living Trust.
WSB: I’ll find about that.
AG: Called “Living Trust”
WSB: Gene Winick was here. Well, he’s this middle-aged Jewish lawyer from the big city.
AG: We know of him.
WSB: So we got up to Fred’s (his friend, Fred Aldrich’s farm), and he said, “Well, you know, you’ve probably never fired a gun before”, So (then he goes) pow! pow! pow! – all his targets were like that!
AG: Bulls-eye(s)?
WSB He’s an expert shot. Isn’t that something? He shot better.. he shot better than I did!
AG Had he known before?
WSB: Maybe.. He said, “Oh yes, I took some target practice”. He was, sort of, you know, being very mysterious – “Well, yes, I used to belong to a club and I took some target practice” – but “target practice”, baby? – he was an expert shot!
AG: Well, well!
WSB: Yes. A very nice person. He’s a very very great diplomat. He sort of mediated between us and Ted Morgan.
AG: How did that work out, by the way?
WSB: It’s winding down Ted sends me book reviews on the English edition [of Morgan’s Burroughs biography]
AG: So There’s a little bit of reconciliation.
WSB: Yes..so..yes.. I didn’t put… (tape ends in media res here)
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-three minutes in, and concluding at the end of the tape]