What I read is that they were not willfully written out, but rather, he wanted to make sure the current wife was taken care of. She was a lot younger but she died first.
Interesting. The reports I sawe all indicated that he had named Ms. Arakawa as his sole heir in his will, but maybe the reports are being sloppy with the language.
Not my area of expertise, but - if she was he sole heir, and she died before he did (by a week or so, according to the coroner), then there is nothing in the will to guide how the estate is to be divided. So essentially intestate.
Would her estate be granted the contents of his estate?
The will isn’t as important as what is in the trusts, and he has at least two of them. The lawyers will have a heyday.
This is why everyone should review annually your documents! His first and second successor trustees are dead.
It is odd that someone with his money (reportedly $80mm) would have a will that failed to contemplate the possibility that his wife would predecease him. That’s basic stuff.
Maybe it’s spell out in the trust? But if his first successor trustee died September 7, 2019! The whole thing is very sloppy.