As the oldest of three siblings, I have all the traits of the "eldest child." I've always been the caretaker, the problem-solver, the perfect child, etc. I can't say that is a role that I have always relished, but it's the role I have forever played. I've never doubted my ability to fulfill that role; in fact I've often prided myself in being the one who solved all the problems. I was the stable one with all the answers. Yes - I am woman, hear me roar!
Until the day almost three years ago when life as my siblings and I knew it ceased to exist and we found ourselves on a fast track to hell with no brakes. Allow me to give you the framework of our trip into the recesses of hell. My brother, Mike and I were raised by the same father and mother. My sister Kathy was given up for adoption when she was born. Mike and I never even knew about her until we were all in our twenties. But by the time my father died suddenly and unexpectedly in February of 2005, Mike, Kathy and I were as close, or closer, than siblings who were all raised together. We all had the same mother, but our mother had divorced my dad many years before. The woman who was his wife at the time is someone none of us ever managed to feel any connection with. By the time Pearl married my dad; she had been a widow twice already and let's just says her lifestyle was financed by her dead husband's estates. She must have been losing her touch though, because after 10 years of marriage to my dad, the marriage was going south and he had long since stopped generously sharing his money with her. Shortly before he died, he was life-flighted to a hospital better able to care for him. None of us were allowed to ride in the helicopter with him. Mike drove Pearl the two hour trip to the hospital and after listening to her rage for nearly the whole time about the "new will your dad hasn't signed yet," he finally told her it wasn't the proper time to be talking about that and asked her to shut up. Dad did make it out of the hospital, but was very ill and unable to care for himself at all. Pearl promptly left on a cruise saying she couldn't very well be expected to lose all the money she had spent on the cruise, could she? Mike was Dad's constant caretaker during those few days, as well as taking over all responsibilities at Dad's manufacturing business. On a day when Dad had felt well enough to leave the house with Mike to get soup from a nearby restaurant, Mike settled Dad in with his lunch and left for the shop with a promise to be back soon to check on him. He arrived back to find Dad slumped in the bathroom. The paramedics were called, but he was gone. Mike made the unbearable call to me. I called my sister, Kathy and we immediately made arrangements to fly to West Texas to be with Mike. Pearl was unreachable for several days. She had left no contact number. We were shattered. Dad was only 66.
Somehow, we all made it through the next few days. We made it through the funeral and even made it through the spectacle of my step-mother at the service parading around the front of the church telling everyone about the diamonds my dad bought her while they were married. We only thought we were in hell at that time. That was soon to come.
We never found a will. The notebook in Dad's office Mikeed "Will and Pre-Marital Agreement" was empty. The file folder in Dad's filing cabinet flagged "Last Will and Testament" was empty. The fire safe where my dad had told me years earlier that he kept a copy of his will contained a lot of things, but no will. Pearl made a point of taking me to her bank and showing me the inside of the safe deposit box that she shared with Dad - no will. Pearl's will was there, but not my dad's. Mike and I searched pointlessly for several months to no avail. No will ever showed up.
In the meantime, my brother continued running Dad's business, continued doing business with the same people, the same bank, everything the same as when Dad was alive and he and Dad were running the business together. Business was booming, Mike had no time to grieve. But he and I comforted ourselves with how proud Dad must be of how Mike was not just handling, but prospering the business. It was a small measure of comfort.
Pearl told Mike and me over and over again that there was no need for any of us to hire lawyers. She reasoned that we shouldn't give our money to lawyers when we could all just agree how the estate was to be divided. She begged, she cajoled, she insisted - no lawyers. Foolishly, we listened. She hired a lawyer. She was appointed administrator of the estate. Mike and I scrambled to find a lawyer and somehow managed to choose the worst lawyer ever to practice estate law in West Texas.
Mike's wife developed a brain tumor. She fought for her life, Mike held on by his fingernails and Pearl and her lawyer continued to work their plan. Mike's wife had surgery, the tumor was successfully removed. She lost her hearing, but her life was spared.
The bank that the business used (Pearl's bank) began to find new and inventive ways to make it difficult for Mike to do business. Coincidentally, Dad's former business partner decided he too would like to build the same kind of tanks Dad's business built. All he needed was the shop, the equipment, the materials and the shop personnel with the know-how and his company too could make the money Mike was making with Dad's business. And after all, the business was tied up in probate. It would be a community service to provide another company that could ease the burden of all that business that fell on Mike's shoulders. As luck would have it, they too were customers of the same bank. The banker was surprisingly accommodating.
In June of that year, another blow. Mike's wife's mother died suddenly. I flew up for the funeral. It was too soon, too reminiscent. My big, strong brother fell to his knees at the back of the church and almost couldn't go on. Somehow, we got through it.
Mike continued running the business, fighting the bank, fighting off the would-be hostile takeovers from former business partners while at the same time consoling his grieving wife who was still recovering from a brain tumor. Pearl meanwhile paid no estate bills, filed no inventory, and met suspiciously with the banker on a nearly daily basis. Suddenly, at the height of one of the busiest times of the year for the business, a severe cash flow shortage developed. And then a few weeks later, another one. This continued to happen for several months. Mike's wife decided to have the secretary/treasurer teach her about the books and accounting functions for the business. Too little, too late. The secretary was secretive, had everything password-protected and was down-right unhelpful. When ordered to reveal the passwords, she would comply and then promptly assign new secret passwords before the next morning. Admittedly, Mike was too shell-shocked to fight that battle and I was too far away to be of any help.
In November of 2005, Mike had reached his limit. He closed the business, turned everything over to the banker and retreated into himself. I hired a high-powered Houston probate attorney and went after Pearl, the bank, the business partner and everyone else I could think of. We managed to have Pearl removed as administrator and myself appointed as successor administrator. We discovered that the former business partner had been operating out of my dad's closed business which was ostensibly in possession of the bank. The banker pleaded ignorance, of course. We were making some progress, nevertheless. And then in February of 2006, our mother died. It was not expected and was, as with my dad and my sister-in-law's mother - quite sudden.
We all hit a brick wall at this point. Then the FBI showed up. The friendly hometown banker was claiming that my brother had defrauded his bank of some $464,000 by submitting false invoices to the bank. The court-appointed lawyer advised my brother to plead guilty in exchange for a slap on the wrist and the promise of probation and no jail time. It didn't seem to matter to her in the least that the claims were false, no such crime had occurred. She turned a deaf ear to our explanation that this was a scheme cooked up by the friendly banker and the former business partner who wanted the business. She never investigated the assets that were turned in to the bank by my brother and were sold by the bank with no accounting to the probate court or application to any debt owed by the business to the bank. Mike was threatened by the FBI agents that if he didn't take the plea, he would probably serve 30 years and be assessed a $1 million fine. He was mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually empty and he was terrified. Our entire world had been turned upside down over the previous year and a half. It wasn't much of a stretch for him to believe that he could very possibly end up in prison for 30 years even though he was innocent. So he took their deal. They lied. He got 15 months in prison.
Oh, and by the way, the bank refused to accept any payments from the estate on the business loan. They foreclosed on the business and the friendly banker made a deal with the business partner who now owns the business. The friendly banker knows that I know what he did. He knows that I keep tabs on him. I know that what goes around, comes around and that it may not be me or my brother or anyone I even know. But someday, just like OJ, all of this will catch up with him. And with the former business partner as well.
My brother and I aren't the kind of people who take revenge. We weren't raised that way and we know that vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Being the problem-solving, I-can-fix-this eldest child that I am, I've had a difficult time letting go of this. I didn't for a long time. My sister and I investigated the hell out of everyone involved. We found a computer whiz who recovered the sabotaged hard drive on my dad's computer and we researched the accounts, emails, documents and every bit of drivel on both computers we had from my dad's company. We know more than a little about everyone and everything ever associated with my dad's business. We talked to more lawyers than I ever hoped to in my entire life. I almost lost my sanity over this. I finally had to let it go. I finally heard that still, small voice telling me I had done all I could do. That voice of God that said, "And having done all, stand." So now I stand. I stand in the knowledge that this is no longer my battle and that the One who fights this battle is just and fair, unfettered by the injustices of this world. And the One who now fights this battle is to be feared.
No comments:
Post a Comment