You still can’t take it with you. But some executives have arranged for the next best thing: huge corporate payouts to their heirs if they die in office, Wall Street Journal reports.

Take Eugene Isenberg, the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd. If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a “severance” payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show. That’s more than the first-quarter earnings at the Houston oil-service company.

Dozens of other companies offer lush death-benefit packages to their top executives, according to a Wall Street Journal review of federal filings. Many companies accelerate unvested stock awards after a death, which by itself can amount to tens of millions of dollars. Some promise giant posthumous severance payouts, supercharged pensions or even a continuation of executives’ salaries or bonuses for years after they’re dead.

The CEO of Shaw Group Inc. is in line to be paid $17 million for not competing with the engineering and construction company after he dies.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s top officer didn’t even need to die to get a death benefit; Lockheed paid out the sum, about $1 million, in March while he was still very much alive.

Death benefits, sometimes called golden coffins, have been around for years, but until recently the amounts were often impossible to determine or were shrouded in the fog of proxy-statement language. A federal rule change 18 months ago required companies to be clearer about what they’re obliged to pay if top executives end their employment, under various circumstances.

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