SOLUTION: After Mr. Stingy died, his lawyer read the will to his family. He left half of his estate to his wife, and $50,000 to his son. The remaining fortune was to be split in this way:

Question 577: After Mr. Stingy died, his lawyer read the will to his family. He left half of his estate to his wife, and $50,000 to his son. The remaining fortune was to be split in this way: half of what remained went to his caddy, half of what remained after that was set aside for the care of his pet iguana, and the remaining $8,000 went to his favorite charity. What was the value of Mr. Stingy's estate?
Answer by janinecb(25) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let's start at the end and work backwards on this one.

His favorite charity got $8,000.
With the assumption that the charity and the iguana received the same amount of money, they the iguana also received $8,000.

The caddy received the sum of the charity and the iguana, so the caddy received $16,000.

The $50,000 for the son and the money for the caddy, iguana, and charity add up to half of the estate, so that comes out to $82,000.

This means that the wife received $82,000 and the total estate was twice that, so the total value of Mr. Stingy's estate was $164,000.