Cryopreservation (part 3) – who would pay for the revival?

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On top of all the practical complications, the dead person is paying for long-term cold storage but as far as I understand it this cost doesn’t cover the costs of trying to revive the person in future, so if this were to happen someone else would have to pay a lot of money and of course there is absolutely no guarantee – in fact not even the faintest suggestion – that it might be successful. And even if it was ever successful there are quite likely to be some side effects, so the re-animated person may well need lengthy extra care once revived, like a person recovering from a coma. So what about money? If a very wealthy person planned ahead, could they make provision for a future revival? Currently it is possible to place money in trust (which can last up to 125 years in the UK I believe), for example for the benefit of children or of other relatives or descendants as yet unborn, but the person who creates the trust cannot also be a beneficiary, so a person couldn’t put their own money into a trust fund for their own benefit in future. Someone else would have to put the money into a trust fund and name the cryopreserved person as a possible beneficiary, and appoint trustees to administer the fund. But who would do that? Perhaps a person’s spouse might be willing to donate a large sum of money to a trust, in the hope of their future revival. But after a few years they might meet someone else and move on with their life, and regret giving the money, or if they were a trustee they might find a way to get around the conditions to access the money for their living family. Perhaps the parents of a terminally-ill child might set money aside. But then if they later went on to have other children who grew up healthy, they might prefer to use that money for them instead. Could someone get around the law by giving their money to someone else to put into trust? That carries the risk that the person who received the gift might then change their mind and just take the money. There is also a large tax liability of 40% inheritance tax (in the UK) on gifts given within 7 years of death (or longer for very large amounts), so the person who wanted to create the trust would have to give the gift at least 7 years before they planned to be frozen, and then still have enough left to live on for the remaining 7 years, and to pay for the freezing process and storage. The trustees would also have to actively invest the money otherwise its value would rapidly reduce over time. But if the dead person was the only named potential beneficiary, and there was no certainty they would be revived, the trustees may not bother to put in all that work, and if a lot of time passed before the frozen person was revived, new trustees would have to be appointed, perhaps over several generations. And the trustees may not see the point of reviving the dead person and supporting them unless they were considered of great importance (Einstein for example). Who would pay to bring you back to life in a hundred years or so? All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2023.