Christopher Lloyd still has the loud yellow shirt from Back to the Future Part II. He wore it on his third date with his wife, Lisa, on a beach 20 years ago. She told him, politely, not to wear it in public. So it stays in the closet. At 88, that shirt may be the cheapest thing he owns with a story this good.
The expensive things came first. Lloyd tells the Journal's Marc Myers that his parents' money was inherited. His mother's father, Lewis Henry Lapham, helped found Texaco in 1902. The family moved to Waveny in 1944, when Lloyd was 6. The grounds in New Canaan, Conn., covered 400 acres. Frederick Law Olmsted's sons did the landscaping. Lloyd was the youngest of seven children and was often on his own. Four governesses raised him, one after another. His mother had dreamed of singing on Broadway, and her family said no. His parents split up when he was 12.
What the money didn't buy
Public school lasted into third grade. Then came boarding schools. At the Darrow School in upstate New York, he was socially awkward and a target for bullies. Halfway through junior year he dropped out. He landed at Staples High, a public school in Westport, and the drama teacher cast him in a play. A magician had already hooked him back in elementary school. Lloyd was let in on a trick, fell down on cue and got a big reaction from 400 kids. In 1957 he got into the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Theater, he says, gave him his first real family. In 1974 he was cast in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Today he and Lisa live on an acre in Montecito, Calif. Their old house sat way up in the hills, and it burned in the fires of 2008. The house they had next felt too cut off. So they moved again, closer to town. Waveny left the family long ago. New Canaan acquired it in 1967 and made it a public park. A few years ago Lisa threw him a surprise birthday party there. “Whenever I'm there, I feel like it's still my home,” he says.
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File this under Estate. A Texaco fortune paid for a 400-acre estate, four governesses and a Park Avenue apartment for the winters. It didn't give a boy who spent a lot of time alone much of a family. By his telling, theater did that. The estate didn't stay in the family either. New Canaan has owned it since 1967. What lasted is what money can't list on a balance sheet, like a drama teacher, the stage and a wife who tells you the truth about a shirt. There's a second lesson in Montecito. A house can burn, and the one that replaces it may not fit the life you have now. The Lloyds moved closer to town. For two people in their later years, that looks like a wise move.
Here's where it touches your own plan. Find the line in your will or trust that says who gets your house. This week, ask that person whether they actually want it. Some heirs don't, and a house nobody wants can turn into a tax bill and a slow sale. If the answer is no, a sale or a buyout can be written in now, while you're the one deciding. Bring the answer to your next review. That talk goes better over a birthday cake than over a will.