Tuesday, December 15, 2015

In which I ask a lawyer at work what she thinks about using the estate money to reimburse Ted for his travel expenses, expecting her to agree with me that it is completely nuts to do that, but she does not agree with me, which ticks me off because how can she not see how right I am?

Me: Oh man. You will not believe what my husband's brother wants! He is not in the will and he thinks the estate should pay for his travel expenses to see his dad.

Lawyer: Well, he is probably pretty upset that he is not in the will.

Me: Yeah, but neither is my husband!

Lawyer: But you said at least he got the IRA.

Me: Yes. But only because his dad didn't get around to changing the beneficiary.

Lawyer: But he got something. And the brothers did not.

Me: Their kids do.

Lawyer: But the brothers do not.

Me: Nope.

Lawyer: What Primo could do is send an email to his other brother outlining what the first one wants. If the other brother agrees, then why not?

Me: BECAUSE IT'S WRONG!

Lawyer: Better to keep peace in the family, don't you think?

Me: No. We don't care if we ever talk to his brother again after this.

16 comments:

  1. I agree with you! I think this lawyer thinks Primo's family functions like a mostly normal (if there is such a thing) one. If that were the case, sure, there might be something to keeping the peace, but it's not like Ted has facilitated any peace at this point anyway.

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  2. No, it is not always better to 'keep the peace.' Actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are full-out family war, and while that's unpleasant, it happens as a natural consequence of being a douche-canoe.

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  3. Keeping the peace is always the "solution". The biggest problem is that it is always the reasonable one who's supposed to give in. The problem person is always given their way making everyone miserable.
    'You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family' That doesn't mean you can't reject the family. It says a lot that all the brothers live in different places and none of them is where Sly lived most of his life.

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  4. I will say that to keep the peace (and so they could come if they wanted to), my dad, the executor, offered to pay out of the estate for my a**hole cousins to fly in for my grandma's funeral so that money wouldn't be an excuse because she would have wanted them there. The cousins still didn't come.

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  5. As I mentioned before - my grandfather, in his discretion as executor of my great-uncle's estate (his BIL), paid a settlement to the cousin who sued. Because it was his estimation that my uncle would not want his money going to pay for lawyers.

    Primo may come to a similar place about whether it costs the estate more to go to court, and whether it is worth paying lawyers some portion of what could be going into the trust.

    HOWEVER. I would strongly advise that if he does this in any way shape or form that he make it a binding agreement. In which Ted agrees that whatever he is receiving is the sum total of what he WILL be receiving from the estate, and will not submit for more even if he realizes he forgot to ask for something or missed that he wasn't getting something that he did ask for in the agreement.

    - AC

    (Personally, I was determined that if the same cousin sued over my grandfather's will, I was going to donate my entire portion to the lawyer fees for making sure she didn't get squat. Fortunately for all of us, she stayed quiet.)

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    1. Ditto. It must be a binding contract or Ted will keep coming back for more and more.

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    2. What? Are you saying if we give him an inch, he will take a mile?

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    3. Reference: "If you give a mouse a cookie"

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    4. lmao. Are you tryin to tell me that I'm preaching to the choir? 8•P

      - AC

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  6. The Appeasement of Ted is a slippery slope. If he gets his travel, accommodation, meals, wardrobe and shipping costs paid for, he'll charge for his time to do the paperwork to get money from the Trust for his son. And each application would take a hundred hours! And then there would be Ted's research time to provide documentation!

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  7. I think it's a great idea - to get Jack into the mix, too. Wonder how Jack, who is local, is going to feel about the children's trust fund paying for Ted's travel. It will come out of that account, of course, and not Doris's IRA, right?

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    1. Oh, yeah. The IRA, because it had a named beneficiary who was alive, is outside the estate. Any monies that Ted would get would come from what the kids get. While I'm sure there are lawyers out there who might take this case I really doubt that Ted will be able to find one. They aren't going to take this on contingency and will want a retainer which I can't see Ted paying. Besides the fact it probably will have to be done in Florida and there really isn't enough money in it. Ted's just being a bully and thinks/hopes that Primo will just cave. Unfortunately for Ted Primo seems to have a very good support system to help him.

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  8. Urgh. For Ted to sue, he'll have to pay a lawyer. I reckon go for it.

    PS - did the lawyer think he had a LEGAL leg to stand on, or did she just think it was the nice thing to do? Lawyers are annoying practical like that, sometimes, when you really just want to know the binding law, family be damned! :)

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    1. Honestly, this person sounds like a horrible lawyer. Either that or they're an enabler from a dysfunctional family and they were offering personal, not legal, advice. Heck, I've heard stories of doctors suggesting homeopathy. Might as well just drive past the doctor's office, too; that should be an effective dilution of an office visit, right? (Well, if I offended anyone, at least I know Primo will find that funny.)

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    2. I think she was just trying to figure out how to resolve the situation with the least stress and she assumed that keeping peace was important to us, which it is not.

      Legally, Primo actually has a lot of latitude, according to the trust lawyer and his best friend, who is also a lawyer.

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    3. Yes, but latitude does not equal rolling over. I'd be tempted to reimburse for the son's cost only and take them from his share.

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