A Probate War Story

Probate law is the law of life. It does appear to focus only upon life’s "end game." But probate is ultimately a lesson in life for the living, even though it’s often a war waged to settle the ashes from someone’s death.

Usually, the Probate war is a "good" war. It’s waged solely within ourselves. Courts, lawyers, tax collectors and others play only minor roles in settling life’s last act. Our own fears and doubts play the principal roles. Casualties of the war are low, except in dollars.

But often enough, the war makes for interesting viewing: it’s an ugly war of attrition, with accusations, revelations, pride, greed and envy heaved from one trench to another. The war makes lawyers fat. But the war also makes some of us jaded: we know within that there must be a better way to wage this war.

Ultimately, we are all dutiful soldiers in someone else’s war.

In the early 1980's when I was a freshman at UH, my Grand Mother and Grand Father Boates both slipped into incapacity. Each was approaching 90.

My Grand Mother had been born in a covered wagon while en route to Oklahoma from Indiana, and Grand Dad Boates had survived gassing as a Canadian calvary officer during World War I. Both survived the dust bowel days of the Great Depression, along with their 4 children. They’d also waited an anxious few weeks while their only son (my father) was MIA following a 17th bombing mission over Germany during World War II. They ultimately created a big prosperous wheat farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

But both also finished life in a bad place, mentally. They didn’t know the people they should have known, where they were, or even the day, the month or the year. They were alone, very old and living on a big farm in the middle of nowhere. And they were senile.

With money in the bank and lots of land to his name, and as a respected former Oklahoma Farm Bureau president and Deacon in the Baptist Church, Grand Dad seemed a particularly ripe candidate for certain disaster. He was a sitting duck for any insurance agent peddling living trusts or annuities, or any other licensed predator who might help him get his ‘affairs in order’ while there was still time.

One Sunday morning, Grand Dad stood up in a large Baptist Church he’d built, and announced that one of his daughter’s wanted to kill him for his money. A few days later, while driving to Liberal, Kansas to buy a new tire, he got lost, probably became increasingly confused, and then drove off a road and killed himself.

But Grand Dad Boates had still weathered the predators and the Demons of Senility almost as well as the Kaiser’s mustard gas. He’d avoided a nursing home, which he’d always vowed to do. And even though some were sure that a particular cousin had probably gotten to him, and written a new Will, they were wrong.

Nonetheless, Grand Dad’s death marked the official commencement of public hostilities in Boates War I.

What followed included minor gun play, a nasty guardianship fight over Grand Mother Boates, and one or two kidnaping of Grand Mother by various partisans. But since Grand Mother understandably despised the ritzy OKC nursing home that replaced her big wheat farm, she was always a willing participant.

Yet it was stretching things too far for a family member to buy a condo at some ski resort from Grand Mother’s funds for "Mrs. Boates’ enjoyment." So an aunt, and finally a banker were named by a probate Court as conservator (guardian) for her estate. Probate Court had saved the day, and imposed an official armistice.

Everything settled down for 8 years. Nobody got shot. But Grand Mother Boates was put back into the ritzy OKC nursing home that always smelled of waste, despite the olfactory hallucinations of its perpetually smiling activities director. In 1993, she died and Boates War I ended. The estate was finally settled, and the siblings formally agreed to look the other way from the storms that had raged on the big farm in the Oklahoma panhandle. They moved on.

When we cooperate, time does heal many wounds.

But then the aunt who’d been removed as the first guardian also died – alone, broken hearted and ostracized. I’d come to know that she’d done things which were not wise, and which did not reflect the best of her personal character and humanity. But she wasn’t a bad person. She’d simply acted as unwisely as all of us sometimes do.

She’d been tarnished as the removed guardian, and she chose to never speak to one of her two daughters through the very day of her own death. That daughter had been the whistle blower on the pride, greed and foolishness that was the prelude to the Boates War. Since my aunt’s inheritance had been surcharged for the costs of the war, she repaid her supposedly disloyal daughter in her own Will: she disinherited her. Ironically, a disinherited child had ultimately saved everyone else’s birthright.

But worse than disinheritance by a broken woman, the daughter had ultimately found herself a stranger to her own mother.

Life seems a profoundly sad drama at times, especially when it comes to love, loss, and the wars we wage with one another over birthrights, money and other ideas. In our own way, each of us is a Prodigal Child defining that which is ours, and demanding it now. But as combatants and partisans, perhaps we think we know too much to see ourselves for who we truly are. Or maybe there’s too much smoke and dust and fear and doubt for us to see much of anything at all.

Besides, surely God is on our side in the Probate War.

Perhaps all of life is war, and probate is the final dramatic act in the larger battle – not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and that sort of thing.

If you seek Probate counsel, write me. I’m a professional soldier whose weathered many wars, including some I’ve started alone, and won’t start again. I’m no hammer, nor hired gun. I’m certainly no shark. So I may not be right for your case, and I won’t hesitate to say so. But if I am, we’ll fight a good fight together.

The materials in this website are for information purposes only and are not intended to be and should not be relied upon by any visitor as legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is intended or implied by a visit to the site or by an inquiry directed to Scott K. Boates unless the inquiry or contact results in his being engaged pursuant to an explicit agreement with a client. Visitors are encouraged to seek the advice of competent counsel in dealing with matters having legal consequences. The term ‘competent counsel’ does not include computer programmers, internet websites offering assorted legal forms, or anyone other than a duly licensed practicing attorney.

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