GTH Estate Planning Blog

Nils and Sylvia are at Sal's today, to enjoy Thanksgiving. About ten days ago, Kyra found out in everyday conversation with Sylvia, that Nils and Sylvia would be going to Sal's. Sylvia mentioned it among a bunch of other things and didn't seem to realize it is a departure from many years of Lars and Kyra's hosting Nils. They had invited Nils and Sylvia this year, but maybe too casually. Sal is Sylvia's nephew, and a financial advisor in the local office of one of the major stock brokerage firms (or whatever they call them now). Lars knows him some.

Lars and Kyra don't have any good reason to object, or even to feel a little hurt. But a little hurt they are, especially Lars. He's having some success at arguing himself out of it, though. Upon learning of the change, Kyra called upon one of her many forms of intelligence and suggested their family do Thanksgiving at the beach this year. This is more work than Lars realizes, but he is appreciative.

It's a good day with and for the kids. Lars is particularly pumped to be at the beach this Thanksgiving because he and Kyra, following through with recently articulated intentions, had met with their lawyer Duncan just the day before to talk about longer-term plans for the property.

It seems to Lars that a lot of his friends and acquaintances are having serious issues. Marital. Health. Financial.

Lars is realizing, or at least thinks he is, that he and Kyra can improve their chances for health and happiness by sound positive steps in certain directions. The beach property is maybe a second-tier factor in their lives, but it's something they can focus upon and improve. Lars decides to talk with his estate planning lawyer friend Duncan about a good way to keep the beach in the family.

Kyra has a phrase for people being overcome by issues: "Things fall apart." She says it's from poetry by a guy name Yeats. She had been an English major. The next line is "The center cannot hold." Lars admires Kyra's perspective on things. He majored in accounting. He's not sure how Kyra perceives him, or for that matter how women perceive men generally. It's a mystery to him.

Anyway, for a lot of people Lars knows, the center isn't holding. For Lars and Kyra, though, it pretty much is.

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.