If I have a long and successful life and decide to write my autobiography in my last year, my dependants should get almost nothing? What of the 95% manuscript I had in my drawer that my wife or child gets published after I am gone?

The greater point that copyright terms are out of control and absurd, I wholly agree with. Family interests controlling rights of a windfall legacy (e.g. Tolkien etc) for decades is crazy. Fifteen or twenty five years after first publication seems nearer the right mark to me.