GTH Estate Planning Blog

Emma (80 at the time of trial) and her husband (now deceased) had lived frugally and assembled 24 acres of view property on Whidbey Island. Emma befriended Linda, or maybe it was the other way around. Linda was a real estate agent.

Over four or five years Linda arranged three sweetheart purchases of portions of Emma's property for Linda's family:

In 2001 five acres assessed at $82,236 were sold to Linda's daughter Dina for $52,000.

In 2002 Linda's daughter Samantha bought another five acres assessed at $195,524 for $80,000.

In 2005 still another five acres with a value of $324,000 were sold to Linda herself for $150,000.

The evidence also showed that Emma's neighbor Don found her "wandering along a roadside ditch in the summer of 2003, holding a toothbrush. When he stopped to help her, Emma did not appear to know where she was going..." When asked at trial why she had made the property sales, Emma said "...there was so much junk up there," and "It's just sand."

Emma's children sued over this dismantling of their family's Whidbey holdings. What did the Court do?

Lars is losing interest in sports.

The Packers' win in the Super Bowl had been kinda good, but that was probably as much a matter of rooting against as for. He can't forgive the Steelers for ripping off the Seahawks in the poorly officiated Super Bowl a few years earlier. Is it the corruption in college sports, more so he thinks than in the pros? Is it the NFL and other strikes? Lars had been able to recover from the baseball strike in 1995, although it took the best Mariners' season ever to bring him back.

Maybe it's because his own teams (like the Mariners) are doing badly. But no, there's something more to it. Is he just generally enjoying everything less?

Not really. Lars does still love the beach.