https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_...
Winning the lottery (publicly, at least) seems to be a real monkey's paw wish.
Ah, 2014. Such a bright, optimistic time to be alive.
I'm not sure I do. She opted into a transparent system and gets the down side that comes with it (or opts out). If this was thrust upon her, I might feel different. I fear the precedent this would set for redacting names from Forbes lists and the like. It's one of those unfortunate occurrences where openness and privacy are in conflict and when it's government actions like this, arresting someone, awarding some other monies to someone, etc I think openness should prevail.
I mean come on, that’s such a petty technicality for such a massive life event. Just let her set up the anonymous trust and move the ticket to it.
And in as much as courts can make and change laws, they must do so on principle, almost always by applying or extending some pre-existing principle of law. It can be difficult to articulate a principle cabined to the particular facts of a single case. It's much easier for legislatures to do that--to craft a rule that literally recites the facts of this woman's case so that the exception only applies to her and to people facing her exact same circumstance.
Maybe the court can do that in this case. We just shouldn't make the mistake of thinking it's an easy case to resolve.
Junior judges are more reticent to rock the boat - they have less resources, less understanding of how the judicial boards and other oversight mechanisms work, etc. Old greybeards generally stop caring - either about bothering to change things or about how 'safe' their ruling will be on appeal. The most active in tossing bad precedent out the window generally end up being the ones that get appointed to higher ranking courts.
The state gets their substantial cut--both through the lottery itself and through taxes--either way. Without having looked into the history of lottery practices, I'm pretty unconvinced that winners need to be outed to collect their winnings.
Equitable relief is precedent-setting, and derives from the basis of "whoa, our rules feel 'off', lets give this person a break".
If you want the precedent to be narrowly used, you just write a ruling that makes it clear that the outcome is exceptionally fact specific.
Which one would you suppose a ruling on this falls under?
The latter hopefully/clearly. But I don't consider it activism to uniformly apply your interpretation of the law. The activism I was concerned about is narrow application in this supposedly "exceptional" circumstance. Is that a "third form" or is it an extension of the first except they carved it out for someone else?
Why not? This is a core facet of their job.
The tug of war in law between flexibility and certainty is nothing new.
In this case you've state the outcome should be either all entitled to anonymity or all restricted from anonymity. Why are those the only two options?
Say sociological research shows: 1) people conceal lottery earnings from spouses in the context of divorce with tremendous regularity, and 2) people who obtain lottery earnings are 10x more likely to be killed by distant, financially-at-risk relatives. Should a lottery winner with 3 violent felons with debts in his family be dealt with in the same manner as an upper middle class winner in the middle of a divorce?
This is why our judges get to tinker with our rules. Because real life has edge cases.
Real life also has preferences and bias. This is why our judges mostly do not get to tinker with the rules.
They mostly don't tinker, not because they aren't allowed, but because rules are designed to capture the base case, so most cases are anticipated by the rules.
This is why most reviews and reporters do not list every banal dispute.
That's orthogonal. What you propose translates to that while the law is not changed (which can take decades in some cases) we should let people suffer rather than "skip technicalities" when we can.
How about sodomy laws (still present in some jurisdictions). Should they be imposed upon gay men until those laws change? And no biggie if people suffer in the meantime?
You misunderstand me. I am saying if the law is wrong, she should win (and so should everyone else, every time, while the law is wrong). I am also saying if the law is wrong, it should change or be struck down. I am not saying she should lose until the law is changed.
Just as a practical matter, people are more likely to litigate an award _before_ the award is disbursed. "Dumb" rules that require an entity to disburse funds to a specific named person contingent upon some simple formality have actually arisen because more robust rules that carefully balance interests and facts (including fraud) can create too much litigation. Those more robust rules are important to keep, but sometimes simply deferring a challenge until after disbursement can cut down on the amount and overall cost of litigation. For one thing it completely removes one of the 3 parties; in this case the agency administering the lottery.
For example, there are rules (legislative and court made law) for things like life insurance policies and bank accounts that require the entities disbursing the funds to pay directly to a named beneficiary, even if ownership of those funds could be and actually is being challenged in, say, probate court. And you can't circumvent the rules by asking a court to change the named beneficiary; that would defeat the whole purpose of the rule, and courts normally won't do that even if they know that, ultimately, the challenger will ultimately be given the funds.
That's the question here, whether the rules being challenged here are the kind of rules intended to prevent litigation that ropes in the agency administering the lottery. If so and the court makes an exception here, it would be difficult if not impossible to prevent other scenarios where challengers try to force the agency to change the name of the winner rather than directly suing the winner after disbursement. The former is often less costly for the challenger and could easily invite more litigation that challenges rightful ownership of a lottery ticket.
However, for your "Forbes" example the law makes a distinction between a public person and a private person.
Many many "private" people successfully sue Forbes to get off their annual "kidnap and ransom" list. The key to being declared a private person is never making public comments or speeches, etc.
Citation needed. Something like that would be pretty big news, especially considering that Forbes will voluntarily redact names of individuals from their list if requested, no lawsuit required.
Are you siding with the state on this merely because it's a state? Would you feel the same way if it were microsoft?
No, and I definitely don't side with the state because it was in the rules. To me, what's legal matters, not what you signed away. When I say "opt in" vs "opt out" I am talking about the known inherent risks of publicity, not about whether you can change the name you sign or other fine print. I am just conceding the argument for transparency has merit.
In this particular case, there is precedence where winning has been detrimental to the winners specifically for the sake of winning (scams, murders, etc.). I think that substantially outweighs the "need" for transparency of the lottery system to seem above board. Just continue to highlight where the ticket was sold and that it was a John/Jane Doe unless the person wants to opt into disclosing identity and call it a day.
If I'm willing to pony up money at absurd odds for a chance to win a larger stack of money, honestly, I don't know how much private/public disclosure of winner is going to affect that. People go to casinos to gamble where the games are inherently stacked against you yet continue to do so.
I just think it is a concern for transparency that need not be there, honestly. Obviously, that's just an individual's opinion, but I don't think it benefits to the degree is assumed. There are some states in which you can win anonymously, and their lotteries are doing fine.
While it’s not thrust upon her in the sense that someone held a gun to her head to force a ticket purchase, her options are severely limited due to state’s monopoly on lottery business. If some entity (including another state) came up with an anonymous lottery system to serve such market, most likely she would not be able to legally purchase such tickets in her home state.
Think we can assume none of it is true. Seems a bit alarmist. At most its no different than what any other wealthy person has to deal with. Welcome to being rich.
I think that's what I would do. When someone is about to start their pitch, I would tell them the rules: if you pitch to me, you must do it on camera, in public. Otherwise, I'm calling my bodyguard.
1. To get higher rates of return, you expose yourself to more risk of losses. The risk is real, i.e., you could lose everything.
2. You need even better (riskier) returns to pay for all the legal/investment/accounting advice because lottery winners rarely have experience here, at least not in the first year.
3. You need even better returns (and more risk) to make up for the taxes you pay up front. The annuity is based on pre-tax funds, and federal tax is much higher than the 25% initial withholding.
4. A $2-3 million windfall is more than enough to live on a sensible six-figure budget and get some practice with investing. If you screw up, you get another windfall next year. Just avoid debt.
5. Will taxes go up in 10 years? Who cares. They won't go to 100%. Even if you lose everything for 9 years straight, you'll still be rich in 10 years with far more certainty than if you took the lump sum. Just stay out of debt.
You also ignoring the time value of money 100 million to day is worth more than 10 million for 10 years
The "now" and "later" lottery payment options do not offer equal nominal amounts, so it doesn't make sense to just say "you're ignoring the time value of money". The regular payment pays out more nominal money because of the time value of money. You could argue that they're getting it wrong, but that's a radically different argument.
[0] http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/27/news/illinois-lottery-state-...
The lump sum is generally pretty close to what an annuity from a reputable company would cost, so the time value of money is already factored into it. Of course, you might prefer a riskier investment for higher returns, but that is really dependent on your risk tolerance, it's not a complete no-brainer to go with the lump sum.
First, the withholding rate is immaterial, it's clearly not enough to meet the tax obligations, you'll owe much more, and should start paying quarterly estimated taxes right away.
Because the annuity is pre-tax, the annuity payments will be taxable. There is some positive tax benefit of spreading the income over many years, because you have a lower marginal tax rate on the bottom of the bracket, but if the annual payments are $2-3 million, there's still a large amount taxed at the maximum rates.
In addition, if you take the lump sum, and invest it, your gains will likely be in the form of qualified dividends, and long term capital gains, which have more favorable tax treatment. If you invest in tax-exempt bonds, you won't pay any tax on the bond payments (but can still have taxable capital gains or losses on the bonds themselves).
The behavioral factors are much more compelling.
I would also take issue with 2; you can take the lump sum and dump it in a Target Date 2030 fund, and be done with it. It's not tax optimized, but whatever, it's easy and done. Yes, you need an estate attorney to help you draw up wills and/or living trusts, but that's not a big deal either. Also, get a big umbrella insurance policy to cover whatever. Because there's no way to shelter the lump sum (or annuity) payments from taxes, and because future capital gains will have preferential treatment, there's not much reason to spend a lot of effort on heroic tax avoidance. You probably need to spend a little bit more on legal advice when you take up new ventures than you would otherwise, but that's only needed when you take up the new venture.
The comments about family really resonate. I did not realize that so many of these folks were being killed by family members, that seems a bit extreme.
My dad grew up in the Great Depression. He used to say "The best way to double your money is fold it in half and stick it in your pocket."