An update from our original post.
Remember John Goodman, the Florida billionaire who adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend to shield his assets? He anticipated that the parents of the boy he killed were going to sue him. Well . . .
The parents settled with him for $33 million. And his girlfriend is still his adopted child. Go figure how this one will untangle. Presumably they’re still dating. Read more
In the new movie, “The Descendants,” George Clooney is an estate attorney, husband, and father. He’s also struggling with a conflict over land his family has owned for generations. As the trustee, Clooney must deal with his money-hungry relatives’ pressure to sell the valuable, unspoiled property to developers.
The film has received great reviews, and it’s a wake-up call: family conflicts are easy to prevent, but expensive and time-consuming if you just ignore them. You can’t wait until the owner is dead, or disabled and can’t communicate.
So enjoy the film. And come discuss your family’s inheritance and control-of-asset issues with us.
Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show — they all had perfect families. Even the Mouseketeers were perfect; you just know they had perfect parents and brushed after every meal.
So if you grew up thinking that your family should be like them but it’s not working out that way, it’s okay. Families do have issues, do have frictions, do have discordant members. Read more
On the magazine cover, the cute but worried dog was staring at a man’s hand. The hand was holding a gun to the dog’s head. The cover caption: “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.”
This is not exactly a case of undue influence. Nobody has you in a chokehold, nobody is threatening to lop off your fingers one at a time, saying “Sign this or else!” That’s what undue influence is usually about.
Aging adults, however, sometimes face the pressures of a different undue influence: being manipulated when they have diminished mental capacity. Who’s doing it? People – often relatives — who seek influence and financial control over the aged adult as well as financial benefit for themselves. Read more