"TRUST ME," HE SAID

Some blog subjects develop after research, some are on-going preoccupations, some are sort of seasonal mood pieces and so on. Some are blowing off steam. This is one of the latter.

Some history. When Bob Scriver divorced me in 1970, he hired both our lawyers. The one he hired for himself was the trickiest snake in the valley. The one he hired for me was a good friend and more or less patron, a benign person who always tried to do good as well as, um, “well.” We wrote out the necessary papers, then reconciled. After six months or so I went back to “my” lawyer to ask whether Bob might just take down the papers to the court on a day he was mad at me, and finish the divorce. My lawyer said, “Oh, no. No reputable judge would allow the admission of papers that old.” Six months later Bob got mad at me, took the papers down to court and the judge granted the divorce. I was not represented and I was not there. I have the transcript (3 pages). Alimony was $1200.

I didn’t realize that since I went right on living with Bob as though nothing had happened, the divorce was essentially voided. If I had thought of it, I could probably have gotten it formally voided in court but far too much time has passed now.

The next time around, Bob outsmarted himself. He hadn’t been paying attention to the changes in marriage law in Montana -- he was neither a justice of the peace nor a city magistrate anymore -- and had let Lorraine move in with him. Pretty soon, to avoid embarrassment, she was presented as his wife. Bingo, now they were married. And a little chart in the law dictated what the alimony would be in terms of percentages as the years went by until at ten years, the percentage was half of the estate. Not only would that have meant a LOT of money, but also it would have brought Bob’s whole empire crashing to the ground, because it would have forced sale of all the property so as to divide it.

The two most destructive dynamics for ranches around here are divorces and estates of old single people with no surviving children that slip into the hands of lawyers.

Bob’s next problem (I had moved on to other careers and enterprises by then) was his will. His lawyer, whom he paid with bronzes (probably at wholesale prices and perhaps unreported as income), talked him into creating a foundation with the lawyer as the director but with the fourth wife as the ultimate authority. Of course, her health and alcoholism meant she was unlikely to survive Bob at all, much less by a margin of a few years. But she was easily bamboozled and controlled. This was done under pressure of impending heart by-pass surgery. Bob survived and set about trying to devise the perfect will, an enterprise that required a lot of scissors and scotch tape and created a sort of legal bricolage. By this time he had had a number of strokes and -- in my opinion -- was no longer himself.

When Bob died, all that stuff was swept away and the will favorable to the lawyer was the one activated. But an even more Tyrannosaurus Rex lawyer out-maneuvered the first and went off with the estate to make deals. I sat in on the probate trials, supervised by a judge later thrown out by the voters for his little deals. He claimed I didn’t have standing, though I did, and refused to protect Lorraine from people basically holding her incommunicado. She was finally rescued by a fall that broke her hip. She was a Canadian citizen and went back to Vancouver, B.C. where her brothers were. Too bad she didn’t take her legal affairs with her. She died in 2003 and everyone assumed her estate -- which should have been worth millions -- went to her brothers, but it didn’t. Her will is on record in Glacier County. The money is missing.

The next experience with lawyers was when my mother died in Portland, OR, in 1998 and HER will entered probate. I had two brothers and she split her assets three ways evenly. One brother had been living with her because he was brain-damaged -- never qualified as a disability because the injury (frontal lobe impact) made him too suspicious to be examined. In the year following her death, he had only a few thousand dollars to live on and no shelter. My other brother, the executor, lived in the SW and didn’t know what was happening, so I went to see the lawyer. I also asked around and since I was working for the City of Portland it was pretty easy to find out things. The guy was a drunk who let his staff do all the work. My executor brother and he had a chat, and a way was found for my other brother to have a bit of money.

That brother died after I moved back to Valier and I wrote a little eulogy on this blog. Soon, blessedly, it popped up on Google for a daughter we knew he had but didn’t know how to contact. She turns out to be adult, competent, entirely worthy, and welcome in the family as a great gift. A perfect executor/beneficiary.

When I first moved back to Valier, I had realized I had no relatives close by and that I was aging fast. I thought I esp. needed to provide a document for caregivers, as my deceased brother had not. But I couldn’t think of a lawyer I didn’t know bad things about. Finally, I settled on one -- a crusty older fellow in a log cabin office. He argued about being the executor but finally agreed on a provisional basis. Pretty soon he retired, more or less, and took in several other lawyers. The log cabin became a bookstore. The community was changing, going upscale. It was a different kind of law office.

In February I had called to ask how to change my beneficiary and executor to my new niece. He said I should come by sometime, but I didn’t. A week or so ago I got a letter billing me $40 for a letter he says he sent in April but I never received. Since I come up short on my basic bills every month, this was an unexpected and, for me, large surprise. I sent the money, ending their services, and then got to thinking about the lawyers still having a will they could activate.

So I went down and asked for all my files, which were in large part early copies of my book about Bob, in case of accusations of plagiarism or of fire in my dubious little house. Three secretaries’ heads went up behind their little walls, like deer in undergrowth. “Come back later, no lawyers are here. We have no authority, etc.” I insisted.

In the end the newest and youngest lawyer, a sweet little Gonzaga grad left to tend the office while the others went out to explore the VERY nice day, sat down with me in his office and we wrestled and argued back and forth, threat and counter-threat, argument and counter-argument. Finally, after many assurances about how honest he was, how much he wanted my welfare, and etc., he said he would have to make copies to keep. I told him NO. I wanted my file closed out. Finally he brought what he said was my entire file except for the manuscript which was filed off premises, which he promised to personally mail.

The next day I didn’t get a phone call from the original lawyer. Instead I got a phone call from the bookstore owner, subtly inquiring about the incident under cover of asking about books. I told him what I would have told the original lawyer.

Today I get a packet of stuff from the original lawyer, returning my check, actually enclosing the original will and documents that the younger lawyer claimed he had given me, and formally acknowledging that our relationship is ended.

So I get from this:

1. Lawyers really hate to talk to angry women. He might actually have been in the building but hiding.
2. Lawyers don’t mind lying, even if they’re good Catholic boys.
3. Working for a lawyer is not a safe job.
4. Law offices these days are run by people under forty. Basically kids.
5. No lawyer is interested in a client who isn’t worth a bunch of money that can be managed by the lawyer. (They had had the idea that I’d made a lot of money off the bio of Bob, though I still have to see ANY money at all.)
6. All those jokes? They’re no joke. The self-policing of ethics that lawyers are supposed to do -- THAT’s the joke.