How to get deadly rich

This website costs money to run, but I’m not smart enough to stop. The truth is that I’m not nearly as smart as the list of men that make more money now that they are dead than 99.5% of Americans will make while they are alive. Ridiculous and amazing at the same time.

Eugene Isenberg is the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd. If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a “severance” payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show. That’s more than the first-quarter earnings at the Houston oil-service company.

So how can you get into the line of people making millions of dollars for being dead? It’s all about contract negotiations. If you have a good contract, you are definitely going to be making money for your family/trust/estate long after you are dead.

My favorite on the list is the CEO of Shaw Group Inc., who is in line to be paid $17 million for not competing with the engineering and construction company after he dies.

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