The twist is in the probate file. Gloria Vanderbilt, heir to the Commodore's $100m, left less than $1.5 million, and Anderson Cooper had said for years that nothing was coming. Is the best thing a fortune can leave a son the warning that it's gone?

California's proposed billionaire tax would still reach a billionaire who has already left for Florida. Proposition 40 would levy a one-time 5% tax on individuals worth more than $1bn, assessed on where they lived on 1 January 2026. Roughly 200 people would owe it. Californians vote on 3 November 2026, so the date that matters is ten months gone by the time the votes are counted. PwC puts the take at roughly $100bn. Bills could be paid over five years, and the measure needs only a simple majority. Larry Page carries the largest estimate. Fortune valued him at $292bn in October, and five per cent of that is about $14.6bn. The Wall Street Journal reported that he paid $101.5m in December 2025 for a Coconut Grove waterfront compound, then $71.9m on 5 January 2026 for a house nearby, bringing the pair to $173.4m. Fortune reported that several of his entities were re-incorporated in Delaware in December. Page has not spoken publicly about his reasons. Mark Zuckerberg went the other way. Meta's SEC filing records his commitment to remain a California resident, or wherever Meta is headquartered, for eight years. It also records that he had told a board committee he was considering moving his primary residence out of the state. The filing is blunt: "Mr. Zuckerberg would effectively be paying to serve as the Company's chief executive officer while residing in California." The mechanism is a new class of non-voting shares. According to Scripps News, he may sell up to 20% of them at once to cover any Prop 40 liability without touching his voting control, about 60.6% of the votes. The rest unlocks at 2.5% a quarter over eight years, and only while he holds a full-time leadership role. Reports say he is also buying an estate on Indian Creek, Florida, an island with 41 residents. Fortune reported $170m. The sale had not officially closed when the reports appeared. Jensen Huang, whom Bloomberg put at a likely bill of about $7bn, told Bloomberg Television he was "perfectly fine" with the tax. He still lives in California. On the measure's own terms, leaving now takes nobody out of it. CalMatters reports that people who have gone since would still owe. The only move that counts is one made before New Year's Day 2026.

Gianluca Vacchi, Instagram's dancing millionaire, says one family stake sold for more than €700m. The websites still say he's worth $200m. The money comes from packaging machines.

JUST IN: Hampstead's Gaddafi mansion, £10m and empty since 2011, belongs to Libya, and the courts have cleared it for sale to pay a £16.1m arms bill. Pool, suede cinema, seven or eight bedrooms, no buyer yet.

Scott Kirby never actually called for a 100 per cent inheritance tax. He said "close to 100 percent at some level", and that he would pay. In an interview with The New York Times published on 18 October 2026, the chief executive of United Airlines said America should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100 percent at some level. He named no rate, no threshold and no bill. The country he was describing has no federal inheritance tax at all. What Washington does levy is an estate tax, settled by the estate before heirs receive anything. The top rate is 40 per cent and the 2026 exclusion is $15m per person. Below that, there is no federal bill. Fortune put Kirby's 2025 compensation at $32.3m, of which base salary was $1.2m. Fox Business reported that this was about 334 times the pay of United's median employee, at $96,670. On 19 October, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry replied on X that if Kirby felt so strongly he "could simply cut a check", and linked to the Treasury's fund for public donations towards the national debt. The link was the sharper part of the reply, because the fund exists. TreasuryDirect says the Bureau of the Fiscal Service may accept gifts to reduce debt held by the public, made during a lifetime or left as a bequest in a will. Pay.gov hosts a form that takes bank transfers, PayPal, Venmo and cards. The total is small. Fox Business reported $67.3m collected over 29 years to 2025, against a national debt of $36.7tn. Kirby has not walked any of it back. On Bloomberg TV on 21 October he stood by his remarks, said he is not a policy advocate and has no plans to run for office, and described himself as having been asked for a "non-consensus opinion". A gift is not a tax. It cannot be directed to any particular purpose, and Congress has passed nothing. A near-100 percent top rate would need Congress. A personal version needs a form or a line in a will. Landry put the practical question in a single link. The gift form is on Pay.gov, and it accepts Venmo.

Prince Harry repaid the £2.4m cost of refitting Frogmore Cottage in September 2020, eight months after he and Meghan announced they were stepping back as senior royals. The Sovereign Grant paid first, for works that included a yoga studio, rewiring and new ceiling beams. The cheque then turned out to cover rent for 2020–21 and 2021–22 too, though no report says how much went on each. The house belongs to the Crown Estate, so the wedding present always had a landlord. 📸 abcnews.go.com · Chris Jackson/WPA Pool/Shutterstock · **Dana Press**

The Hermès heir Nicolas Puech was once worth $15.6bn by Forbes's count. His lawyers say the shares are no longer his, Forbes dropped him from its list, and he once planned to leave half his fortune to his former gardener.

JUST IN: Warren Buffett's children inherit a deadline, not a fortune. $140 billion to give away by 31 December 2034, every grant by unanimous vote. Their mother left them $10 million each.

Rose Leslie's family is not selling Lickleyhead Castle. A lender sold it in 2019 for £650,000. Late October brought a wave of headlines pricing her "ancestral home" at $1.54m, as if an old family were quietly loosening its grip. The castle is for sale. Almost everything else needs correcting. The Leslies lost it slowly, then in a sheriff court. In September 2018 Together Commercial Finance was granted a decree for repossession at Aberdeen Sheriff Court, having asked for Rose's father, Sebastian Leslie, to be found in default over calling-up notices. He did not attend, and sent an email saying he had no objection. The lender advertised at offers over £700,000. It sold for £650,000 to Mark and Cathy Davies, a couple from Wirral, who made it a luxury holiday let and events venue. That was half what the family had hoped for in 2013, when agents called the castle "surplus to their requirements" and asked about £1.3m. Then there is the wedding. Rose Leslie married Kit Harington on 23 June 2018, with the reception at Wardhill Castle, where her brother William and his wife Sarah took over the estate in 2014. Two castles in one parish is a lot of roof. The one with the wedding photographs is not the one with the estate agent's board. The $1.54m is a calculator's work. Savills prices Lickleyhead in sterling, at offers over £1,150,000, and Mansion Global converted it to "£1.15 million (US$1.54 million)". The figure then travelled with a famous name attached and the ownership history left behind. For that, a buyer gets an L-shaped tower house in Premnay, listed Grade A, with eight bedrooms, 5,554 sq ft, about 11 acres, a walled garden and a former ice house. Nobody agrees on its age: 1499, 1560, 1580, or simply 17th century, depending on who you ask. The ask is about 77 per cent above the 2019 price, and still roughly £150,000 below what the Leslies wanted thirteen years ago. Families measure castles in centuries; lenders measure them in calling-up notices.

Standard Oil paid King Ibn Saud $1,156,400 for the right to look for oil in his kingdom. By 1950 his half of the profits was $90 million a year. Time reported the first figure in 1940: the payment when he granted the concession, and $165,000 a year in rent until oil was found. He told the oilmen the Japanese had offered him twice as much for a third of the ground. By 1941 he was in trouble. His ordinary revenue, from the pilgrimage to Mecca and from customs, had practically disappeared. An oil company told President Roosevelt his finances were desperate; it had spent about $27.5 million and advanced him $6.8 million against royalties. Watch the Universal Newsreel of 21 February 1945: rugs spread on an American warship's deck, his guards, and then the King beside Roosevelt. The two met aboard the USS Quincy on 14 February. In 1946 he was paid 22 cents a barrel. Oil and the pilgrimage were his chief sources of income. At the end of 1950 Aramco made him an equal partner in its profits. Time put his take for 1950 at $90 million, against $60 million under the old royalty of 34 cents a barrel. $1,156,400 to let them look. $90 million a year once they found it.