4
The syndicate with nothing written down
The workplace pool where one person paid late, and everybody lawyered up.
Syndicate disputes are a reliable feature of every large jackpot. The pattern repeats: a group has played together for years informally, someone did not pay in that particular week, the ticket wins, and the question of whether they are in becomes a lawsuit.
Cases have run for years and consumed meaningful fractions of the prize in legal fees. Several have ended with workplaces where the winners and the excluded still had to share a corridor.
The fix costs ten minutes. Write down who is in, what each person contributes, how a win is split, who holds the tickets, and circulate a photo of every ticket before the draw. Nobody who has done this has ever regretted it.
Courts generally look for evidence of an agreement rather than a signature — a pattern of contributions, messages, a list on a noticeboard. Which means the cases that go worst are the ones where the group was closest and least formal, because there is nothing written anywhere.