Hearing the news that you have received an unexpected inheritance is a stunning event, even if it is coming from a family member or friend.

However, it is all the more surprising when you are informed that you have been named in the will of someone unrelated to you that you have never met.

This is an experience that was shared recently by two veteran actors, Kevin Brophy and Peter Barton.

Barton played Dr. Scott Grainger on The Young and the Restless a number of years ago, and Brophy starred on the Lucan television series that lasted for one season in the late 70s.

The two actors are actually friends because they worked together on a movie in 1981.

Brophy and Barton are sharing an estate that was left to them by an Illinois man named Ray Fulk. He was a fan of the actors’ work, and he wrote to them years ago. They responded politely, and this is apparently something that Fulk never forgot.

He didn’t have any close relatives alive so he decided to leave everything to these two actors who had shown him a little bit of kindness. He engaged the services of an estate planning attorney in 1997 and a last will was executed.

Though Ray Fulk lived in a farmhouse with no running water, considering his liquid assets and the value of his land the estate is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $1 million.

In addition to the inheritances that he left to Brophy and Barton he also left $5000 to a Chicago area humane society.