In which Primo takes off the gloves with Ted, who has been a complete jerk

Primo has drafted an email to Ted.

"This is going to make him furious," he said. "He went off on my parents when they started an email with, 'Let's be clear.' He said, 'Let's NOT talk about 'let's.'"

"Good," I said. "He has become an audacious pain in the neck. Every time I think he can't be more presumptuous, he does something new."

From: PrimoTo: Ted

I apologize for not getting back to you until now. It took a bit longer than I expected to gather some information.

I decided to call [the insurance company] about Dad's life insurance policy and learned that you had called to provide notification of his death on September 14.  You did not discuss that with me before calling (which you should have done) or even inform me that you had initiated contact with [the insurance company]; all you did was write"I received a [insurance company] letter about our parents' trust." I wondered why you had received such a letter and was surprised to learn that you had requested it! I would probably not be upset if you had informed the  [insurance company] claims representative that the claim form should be sent to me and provided my name and address, but your action (requesting the form and then asking me to help you complete it) was way out of line. I don't know whether you were thinking that perhaps you were one of the life insurance beneficiaries, but you could have asked me and I could have told you that the only beneficiary is the Drunk trust. (I have the original certificate of insurance and the beneficiary designation forms from 2005.)

Let's get some things straight here:1. It's not "our parents' trust." It's my parents' trust. We have the same father but not the same mother. You loved my mother as a member of your family, but your mother is still alive.2. Neither of us is a beneficiary of the trust, but I am the trustee and you're not.3. I am Dad's personal representative, and you're not.As trustee, I am responsible for receiving the insurance payment and for (eventually) distributing it to the grandchildren's trusts. I have Dad's death certificates. The responsibility for filing the claim is mine. [The insurance company] is sending another copy of the claim form to me; I will complete it, attach the required documents, and receive the insurance payment.  I haven't been a hurry to file the life insurance claims because the trust is the beneficiary of both policies; it will be a while (probably on the order of a couple of months from now) before the kids' individual trust accounts are opened and some of the trust assets are available for their benefit.

There are two other open issues between us at this point,  your son's educational expenses and the ongoing controversy over a piece of jewelry. I will send a separate response to your wife's email regarding those topics. Although each of you requested in the applicable email messages that we discuss these issues by phone, I don't wish to do that. I prefer to correspond about sensitive issues by email because it is much easier to be precise in writing and email is self-documenting.

Primo