I would pay off all of my families houses and bills, buy several small condos in various places, buy a big piece of land in fl and OK, build modest houses with really big garages on them, invest at least half of what I get and blow the rest on toys most likely
Gifts over a certain amount ($15k?) are taxed. Give small gifts. Or, if you're a tax cheat, give unreported cash or purchased items. (I've wondered if the ultra-wealthy report the gifts given to their adult children.)
Patrick - thanks for the tip. I'll send the 10% in $15k amounts over about 20 years, so you're not taxed.
Impossible to claim as a blind trust in most states, as has been mentioned. Most Lotteries also have requirements to use your name and image for PR and a possible press conference. Regardless of the above, a lottery is a public agnecy and everything, including winners name(s), city lived in, etc., is available via Freedom of Information Act inquiries. Best to contact your state lottery headquarters for details.
Don't know who wrote the advice on that website, but they know shit about lotteries. The social/personal advice is great, but the legal is very uninformed.
Note: After you validate the ticket, you can establish any type of trust you want and have any future payments (if you choose annuity or the jackpot is paid by annuity) made to that trust. It is recommended, because often scam artists will do a FOIA search for all winners over $XXX dollars and start calling. Best advice is to show up with your lawyer(after consulting him/her - make it a good lawyer who knows this stuff), do the meet and greet, smile for the camera and go away. Far away. Sell your house, it's no good anymore. Open a trust, hire someone to manage it, protect the money from people who will slip on your sidewalk and sue you and then leave. Come back after 6 months.
Last but not least, don't go crazy. There are enough stories about Jackpot winners going bankrupt within a few years to fill a book.
If anyone wants to know anything further about specific lotteries or lotteries in general, PM me. I am...errrm.. something of a specialist. :b
Interesting reading here, thought I would chime in. I work for the company that prints all those scratch off tickets people buy by the billions! We do about 17 billion a year and it seems there is no letting up. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to make that ticket that you throw away seconds after you scratch it, seems almost a shame. Jeff, your state requires us to run millions of tickets omit free, meaning if we make a few bad ones, we have to go back and print only those so the numbers run consecutive from one to one million. People always ask me to print them a winner and my reply is that if I could do that I wouldn't still need to work, also being a contractor for the lottery, I cannot legally play or win, even though I have no way to know where the winners are (again, I wouldn't still be working)so if I hit the big one, my parents or mother-in-law would have to redeem it.
When I lived in New York I worked for the post office as a rural carrier. All I could get in my little jeep was AM radio, so I listened to a financial advice show that ran during the three hours or so I was out delivering the mail. The guy got a surprising number of calls from folks who had won prizes in lotteries in New York and neighboring states, and there was one piece of advice that he gave to everyone:
Take 5 to 10 percent of the net from your first check (depending on the total size of the prize) and set it aside to go nuts with. Buy the motorcycle, the yacht, the $50,000 home theater, whatever it is. Get it out of your system. And understand that when that money's gone, that's it. The rest of it has to be put to good and responsible use. He said this will save you from supressing the urge to just go nuts with some of the money until the pressure builds up and you do something really stupid with 90% of it three months or six months down the road.
Nah, I don't consider you an enemy. Hey, we both love home theater, that transcends anything else man. I work on a gravure based press in the imaging department. It is my job to print the play information on the front and the barcode. I have an electronics background, really just fell into this type work about 14 years ago (and I can't get out!. We use what stuff you wrote? Code? Prize structures? Yeah, PM me, we'll talk. I think you may have had a higher up position than me so you know more about that than I do. Oh yeah, it is Scigames, Alpharetta.
QUESTION what happens if no one brings a winning ticket to collect. You have 180 days.. Who gets the $365 Million? I was told it goes back and is split by the states??? Who knows?