Charles Vance Millar
Known throughout his life as a prankster, Canadian lawyer Charles Vance Millar had no family to which to leave his assets. So before his 1926 death, Millar, who enjoyed devising social experiments that targeted peoples' greed, drafted a truly unusual will. In it, he granted three men who hated each other joint ownership of his Jamaica vacation home. In the ninth clause of his will, Millar dictated that ten years after his death the value of his estate, $750,000, be granted to the Canadian woman who had had the most babies in the interim. The resulting "contest" resulted in a tie, and four women, who each bore nine children, shared the wealth. Thus, the estate of the childless, joke-loving attorney was passed on to support the upbringing of 36 children whom he had never met.