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Originally Posted by Kimura-sensei
If you won the lottery, it makes more sense to take it as a lump sum. Not sure if you guys are aware of this, but if you (the ticket winner) die, whatever payment is left over is void. Your heirs (including your spouse) will receive no further payments.
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One way to workaround this is might be to use some of the yearly lottery money to pay the premiums on a high payout life insurance policy. That way even if the winner dies prematurely and the lottery money stops, the lottery winners family can expect to receive one last large sum of money from the insurance company to help them out.
I don't know, if I won I would probably be concerned more about the possibility of being kidnapped and held for ransom. Even if the winner is only getting 5 million or so per year, that's still a lot of money and people are killed every day for far less. If the winner opted for a 26 year payout this might serve to perhaps limit how much ransom a kidnapper might ask for at a given time, but it would put the family of the winner between a rock and a hard place where not meeting the ransom demands could mean risking the loss a loved one and saying goodbye to all those millions the family stands to gain in future years. So I guess an expense for the lottery winner to list, along with hiring a good accountant and tax lawyer, is contracting a security firm to provide home and personal protection services. That or move to the middle of nowhere in another state or country where nobody would recognize that you were a lottery winner and you were careful to maintain a public appearance that wouldn't lead other to believe you were extremely rich.