Trust of the Month for "transhumans:" The PRT

You can't take it with you, but you can come back and get it, as Wall Street Journal readers learn today from this article.

PRT stands for Personal Revival Trust. Perhaps a dozen or more have been set up. Here's how grantors like David Pizer of Arizona hope to leave millions to . . . themselves!

Like some 1,000 other members of the "cryonics" movement, Mr. Pizer has made arrangements to have his body frozen in liquid nitrogen as soon as possible after he dies. In this way, Mr. Pizer, a heavy-set, philosophical man who is 64 years old, hopes to be revived sometime in the future when medicine has advanced far beyond where it stands today.

And because Mr. Pizer doesn't wish to return a pauper, he's taken an additional step: He's left his money to himself.

With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated. Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the "richest man in the world."

The Journal reports that Wachovia is trustee of at least one PRT. A Wachovia estate planner recently discussed the concept at the First Annual Colloquium on the Law of Transhuman Persons in Florida.