The fate of the $16B Walton estate (Fortune/CNNMoney.com)

Helen Walton's will could finally turn the Wal-Mart founder's family into a philanthropy powerhouse, says Fortune's Carol Loomis.

By Carol J. Loomis, Fortune editor-at-large
May 1 2007: 6:13 AM EDT

(Fortune Magazine) -- The death of Helen Robson Walton at 87 last month - and a will that provides for philanthropy - may finally turn America's richest family into one of its most charitable.

Helen and her late husband, Wal-Mart founder Sam, always appeared to be heading toward large-scale donations. But when Sam died in 1992, most of his money passed to Helen. And though she increased her giving to an extent, the Waltons remained - as critics have noted - a relatively small force in philanthropy.

That is going to change, and the money will come from Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500) shares. On March 30, according to Wal-Mart's just-published proxy statement, Helen owned only about $37 million of Wal-Mart shares directly. But the family's true vault of wealth is a company called Walton Enterprises LLC, which holds about 1.68 billion Wal-Mart shares, worth $82 billion.

And at her death Helen, by all indications, owned one-fifth of the LLC. It would be simplistic to say that she was therefore worth one-fifth of $82 billion, or $16.4 billion. For complex reasons, one-fifth of Walton Enterprises is worth less than one-fifth of that firm's assets.

Even so, Helen died a billionaire many times over, and if her will were to say - just to speculate - that all her wealth should go directly into the already existing Walton Family Foundation, it would leap from an also-ran to one of the three largest foundations in the U.S. Eventually the enlarged foundation would need to be financed by sales of Wal-Mart stock. The Waltons indeed announced after Helen's death that sales could be expected down the line.
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more: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008717/index.htm?cnn=yes

Now you know for certain -- you really CAN'T take it with you, or this money would be gone.