Rule of Law

[VisionofMilotic]

My father is a professor who teaches American government. He likes to taunt his students with legal dilemmas. This is a scenario he concocted that usually never fails to get a conversation started.

The Law of Inheritance

You spend a fun day with your best friend, and while out he buys a lottery ticket. Your friend regularly loses and forgets things, so he entrusts you with his ticket for safekeeping.

One week later you hear on radio the winning combination to the 10 million dollar jackpot, and realize the number matches your friend's lotto ticket number! You race to phone your friend about the great news. He is so excited to hear about this unbelievable stroke of good luck that he has a heart attack suddenly and dies!

You prepare for your best friend's funeral. It's the least you can do, right?

Your friend sadly has no close relations. His parents are dead, he is not married, no siblings or children. The only person who shows up at the funeral besides you is an aunt somewhere on his family tree that he was not close to.

Since your friend made no will his possessions legally pass to whoever his next living relative is, meaning the loto is the distant aunt's now. However, nobody knows your friend purchased a winning lottery ticket but you...nobody will know unless you tell them.

You decide to

A) Follow the law, and go tell the aunt everything you know, handing over the winning lottery ticket. It's better fo your conscience.

Or

B) Follow the money and say nothing cash the ticket in as your own, and become extremely rich. It's better for your bank account.

 

[Nah]

Am I allowed to basically do both and split the $10 million with the aunt?

 

[Sheep]

Considering winning very high numbers from the lottery has led to people needing to cut contact and flee their countries, kidnappings, family/friends being held for ransom, and killings... I will go with A.

 

[gimmepie]

I want to be moral and say option A, but a few million dollars would solve a lot of my problems and could be used to do a lot of good so... probably option B unless her need seemed greater.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

I would take the lottery ticket. If it was a close relationship like the friend's wife, child or mother I would give the ticket to them, but since this is someone he was not close to I think it is entirely possible that a best friend might prefer that I inherit than a distant relative. Now I would be willing to split some of the money with the aunt in memory of my friend after cashing in the ticket, but that's the best I can do :p

 

[Fleurdelis]

The only distant aunt I know of is a pain in the arse so gimme that money I can share it with my dad, sister and every good friend I know of.

 

[Her]

considering the question provides a practically foolproof method of pocketing the 10 million without any legal drawbacks, i'm going to take the bait and embrace the selfishness implied
not even going to try to justify that since the question is designed to test one's adherence to the law in even the most banal of circumstances and i'm sidestepping it

 

[Megan]

I'd probably throw just away the lottery ticket. I can't even decide what to do with the limited amount of money I already have so what am I supposed to do with even more of that? Donate it? That would kind of be similar to option A. At the same time I can't be bothered with spending all the time trying to contact some random person that I'm not associated to in any shape or form. Well, not anymore. Regardless, I kind of doubt that they're in such a need of it, anyway.

So I throw it away. If someone else finds it: well, it's their lucky day!