Most estate battles are between known family members, or an estranged distant relative or ex-spouse. However, in the estate battle of Tony Hsieh, the mysteries keep coming, as reported in a recent article, “The $500 Million Mystery Will, Signed by Ghosts,” from The New York Times. A will, allegedly from Hsieh, arrived in a simple Priority Mail envelope at an attorney’s office with both conventional and baffling directions.
When Tony Hsieh died, the founder of Zappos had a $500 million estate. He was unmarried and childless, and since no will could be found, the entire estate would go to his parents, Richard and Judy Hsieh. A surprise then arrived at a Reno law firm.
The will included a trust to receive $50 million in addition to proceeds from the sale of four pieces of real estate. No record of a trust has ever been found. The letter accompanying the will explained it had been discovered in February 2025 with the personal belongings of a 91-year-old resident of Pakistan who had died of Alzheimer’s disease. There’s no evidence he knew of Hsieh’s passing.
To the family, this was bizarre. Tony didn’t know the man, had no connections to Pakistan and the four others who purportedly signed and witnessed the will at Tony’s home in Las Vegas have never been found. The thinking is that they are all fictional, as is the man who mailed the document to the law office, who has been identified as Kashif Singh, the 91-year-old man’s grandson.
It gets stranger. The will was mailed to two Nevada lawyers as co-executors. Neither of them knew Hsieh, and they had no obligation to honor the purported will. But the will met Nevada’s statutory requirements. They petitioned the court to validate the will and remove Hsieh’s father as the estate’s administrator.
Despite all the oddities, the will cleared Nevada’s legal threshold for serious consideration, which The Times characterizes as “surprisingly low.” Even though the District Court judge said the will was “just odd,” this alone didn’t mean it wasn’t valid.
The will anticipated the response you’d expect from any father . . . it contained a no-contest clause stipulating that if any member of the Hsieh family challenged it, the parents and brothers would get nothing. By accepting the will, the members of the Hsieh family would receive whatever remained after all the strange bequests.
The no-contest clause didn’t sit well with the family, and they have engaged in an estate battle of larger-than-life proportions.
The last time an estate battle was this unusual was the 1976 will battle over Howard Hughes, who also died without children, a spouse, or an estate, and, like Hsieh, lived in Las Vegas. It took more than three decades to litigate the 40 wills brought to the court. The Hsieh matter will likely take just as long.
The Hsieh family maintains this is a scam of epic proportions. Others think it may have been Tony Hsieh himself who created the will, as drugs and delusions fueled his last years.
For regular people, an estate battle can be avoided simply by having an experienced estate planning attorney prepare a last will and have it properly executed. Even when the stakes are considerably lower, a no-contest clause is useful to discourage an estranged family member or distant relative from making a claim against the estate.
To speak with an experience attorney regarding your will, click here.
Reference: The New York Times (March 15, 2026) “The $500 Million Mystery Will, Signed by Ghosts”
