They have always lusted after family estates - at least as long as I have been around them, since the early 1960s.
However, through most of the 1960s they strictly forbid verbally asking for donations from the platform - too much like worldly christendom. Estate planning was done quietly in the background. If the estate was big enough, watchtower legal would send somebody to help get the will redone. Hayden Covington was one of the chief protagonists in this. I know of one large estate that he manipulated into a society bequest and left the natural heirs out in the cold. But nothing was publicly said about contributions or estates by tradition at that time.
Everything changed, IMHO, when the society needed large sums of money to convert from letterpress printing to offset printing and replacing the line-o-type machines with computer typesetting. At that point, service meeting parts were made to ask for donations. COs also mentioned it in their talks to the congregations. Many of us were shocked by it - it completely broke the tradition of not asking for money from the platform.
They have apparantly grown more bold over the years about begging money - I guess the only difference with churches of christendom on this subject now is that they still don't "pass the plate", instead depending on more and more prominently displayed contribution boxes.
