Jackie Coogan was an adorable scamp of a child. He was Charlie Chaplin’s titular sidekick in The Kid. He was the first to portray Oliver Twist on film. Jackie Coogan was the most successful child actor in early cinema. He earned $4 million. That’s over $65M in modern dollars. His mother and stepfather spent the lion’s share of it before he turned 21. When Jackie asked for the balance, they told him to go outside and practice falling down. Jackie had to sue for the scraps. He won, but halved the remainder through legal fees.

The result was that we got the 1939 California Child Actors Bill, or Coogan Act, requiring a paltry 15% of all a child actors earning to be put in a trust. Problem not solved, but mitigated.

Robin Williams wasn’t broke because he overspent on a lavish lifestyle.  He wasn’t broke because he was slow to recognize that his marketability was gone. He was still making bank. He has four movies releasing this year. He reluctantly signed on to Mrs. Doubtfire 2 to make ends meet after his TV series was canceled.

What was the problem? The problem was two ex-wives draining him dry. The problem was a judge who pretended that Mr. Williams would pull $20M per movie paychecks forever. Indignity enough that he had to halve his estate, and then have the half again. But both of the exes were pulling maintenance as well. Both of them continued to pull a healthy “marriage pension” long after they moved on. Nobody cared. As long as the cash cow could still trundle, nobody cared.

This shit has to stop. Those exes didn’t build a business with Mr. Williams. They didn’t “give up a lifestyle” to marry Mr. Williams. They probably got herpes from him, and this is not a secret. Wife #2 would have gone into that marriage understanding the risks.

Nobody deserves a $30M payout AND indefinite maintenance for a ten year marriage. Not even when you catch him schtuping the ugly Nanny (Wife #2). Not even if you catch him schtuping a cocktail waitress. That’s bullshit. Nobody deserves to have the marrow sucked from their bones fifteen years after a marriage ends. Enough.

The Robin Williams Law: The divorcing spouse gets $4M or 22% of the celebrity’s net worth, whichever is LESS. And that is IT. Done. Finito. Move on to your next conquest or a quiet life, your choice. If you can’t live on $4 Million, that’s your problem. Every kid you have gets a trust, not millions in “child support.” No child requires millions of dollars per year to live.  They’ll actually see far more of the money that goes into a trust.

Folks interested in ghoulish death have posited that “drop hanging” is probably the quickest, most humane way to die.  And by “drop hanging” I mean the English trap door method of hanging that requires a math calculation to add just enough length to the noose (for your body weight) that the fall snaps your central nervous system, and not so much rope that momentum separates your head from your shoulders. Too little and you die slowly.

Counter-point, the same people have also said that “slow hanging” is one of the worst, most painful ways to go. In Iran and other countries of Middle East, homosexuals are imprisoned as they are discovered. They wait until they have seven or eight homosexuals incarcerated, and then they march them out to a construction crane and noose them to the crane arm with a thin, plastic-coated electrical wire. The crane slowly lifts so the unhooded man closest to the crane cab has plenty of time to see the others struggle and writhe in bug-eyed panic before the tension begins to lift his heels from the dirt.

If you hang yourself in a suicide, you don’t just want to die. You want to make a statement. Either you loathe yourself, or you want your loved ones to see your suffering and feel responsible.

I have no information that his third wife had hinted at divorce. Zero. I think it’s weird that he was discovered by his PA a full day after killing himself. Really? Where was his wife? You won’t hear Susan Schneider admit that she warned Robin that the marriage was going to end, not any time soon. Twenty years from now you’ll be watching a biopic and the truth will out. Betcha.

LATE EDITING NOTE: I'm reading that everything between Mr. Williams and Susan Schneider was hunky-dory. So I'm wrong about the above. At least for today.

Take your four million and move on down the road. Nobody is entitled to become another human being’s 30 million dollar + parasite for life.

Can you hear him now, ladies? Looks like you’ve killed your host organism. Time to find another. Or maybe just go outside and practice falling down.