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jdsawyer said: I've been hashing through these issues myself as I try to figure out how to structure my literary estate. As like you, I don't now have nor likely ever will have children, the question of the income from my copyrights providing for them is moot. That income providing for my partner, should she survive me, is a live question, but it's a separate question from who controls the trust that owns the work.

The basic options are:
1) signing the copyrights over to a trust, which then maintains and controls the properties after you die for the benefit of the trust's beneficiaries. In this case, selecting the trustee and the beneficiary are the two tricky parts. As the literary trustee for a couple other writers, I'm not eager to ask someone who isn't already very good with both the art and the business to do this job.

2) Release the works into the public domain upon my death (or upon satisfying any debts I leave behind, should I die in ignominious circumstances).

3) Some combination of the above, where the trust was designed to operate for a limited time and then dissolve, releasing the works into the public domain.


For me, my central concern is to what extent I want to protect my original vision versus giving the stories a hopping chance to live long (or forever) in the popular consciousness, a'la the works of Lovecraft or Dickens or any of the others, whose works would probably not survive to this day had they not slipped into the public domain and/or been deliberately opened up while they were still in the popular imagination.

It's a toughie.  As far as corporate licensees, what I worry most about is corporations attempting to maintain a lock on the property long after my interest has expired. This prospect does not make my pink parts all happy.

FWIW

Dan Sawyer