“I’m not Josie Grossie anymore!”

Friends:

There is a scene at the end of “Never Been Kissed” where the main character, Josie (played by Drew Barrymore), the 25-year old journalist who goes back to high school undercover for a newspaper story, castigates the popular people at the prom and says: “All of you people, there is a big world out there… bigger than prom, bigger than high school and it won’t matter if you were the prom queen, the quarterback of the football team or the biggest nerd in school.  Find out who you are and try not to be afraid of it.”

You may be surprised to learn this, but I wasn’t the most popular person in high school.  First and foremost, it always seemed that being smart was a recipe for “uncoolness” so I had that going against me.  I didn’t have a really cool hair cut or a devil may care attitude and I didn’t seem to, for one reason or another, make inroads with any of the cool kids.  I was a baseball player but that certainly didn’t qualify me to be a jock because I also had a brain and besides, everyone knew that football players were much cooler than baseball players every day of the week.  The only thing I did have going for me was that I was an identical twin, but that also worked as a hindrance because I think some of the cool people didn’t want to take the effort to learn which one of us was which so that acted against me as well.  Yes, I was one of the masses who simply could not wait for high school to be over so that the real “adulthood” could begin in college.  And, oh yeah, I forgot—the good looking girls always told me that I was a guy they would want to marry, but not date.  Hmm, that one certainly sent mixed signals…

Yes, I am sure that this is all a big surprise to you since many of you know me through my networking efforts.  And isn’t networking just a glorified popularity contest?  Sure, our specific areas of expertise and intelligence are the true attributes that matter to our clients, but none of that becomes apparent if you never gain some level of popularity.  No one will know how great you are at your job if you are always perceived as the guy who sits alone in the corner. 

But all of these thoughts and insecurities came back this past weekend as my brother and I (along with our wives) attended our 20^th high school reunion.  It seems like just yesterday we attended our 10^th reunion and here we are, 10 more years out of school. 

When you are in high school, the thought is always one of what people will turn into once they leave school.  Those kids whose popularity was too big even for the school must have gotten a dose of reality when they were the little fish in the big pond of college life, right?  Did they experience some sort of identity crisis when they realized that their importance in high school paled in comparison to their anonymity in college?  Or did some of them find a way to maintain that popularity and avoid the crash of inconspicuousness that so many of us felt in high school?  Or, did a different type of transition take place, the anonymous into the big man on campus?

I never had great plans for college life.  From elementary school on, I saw the educational process as a means to an end, the end being some form of job outside of school.  High school was a means to college and college was a means to law school (once I decided that was my path) and law school was a course to practice and “real life.”  Yet when I got to college my focus on law school and using college as a means to that end resulted in a dramatic personality shift.

You see, law schools like the grades as much as they like the extra-curricular activities such as student government and fraternities and on-campus organizations.  The same types of organizations I turned my nose up at in high school were now going to be my best friends.  So I changed—I got more comfortable with myself.  I got more comfortable with strangers.  I got more comfortable with having to be the center of attention.  In high school I shied away from the center of attention because it usually would have required something negative, like a rebellion against administration.  In college, it was completely different.  Being the center of attention meant speaking up for the masses, being a leader to them, rubbing elbows with administration and pressing the right flesh.  Did I turn into a quasi-politician?  I guess you could say that.  Did it do me wonders?  Absolutely!  It gave me confidence and a comfort in dealing with “adults” and strangers.

However law school was entirely different.  It was back to being anonymous.  The same cliques that existed in high school reared their ugly head in law school.  For instance, on the first day of class it seemed as if everyone already knew each other, except for me who knew no one.  How was it possible that the guy from Kansas seemed to be the most popular while Rob Cohen, the local boy, the California kid, the big man on campus in college, knew no one?  Argh, it’s the world of popularity messing with me again.

So law school was tough, yet it was a means to an end—get the education, pass the bar, get a job and be on your way.  And that’s just what happened.  During law school I kept my persona low key—no one needed me to be their leader; we didn’t have student government or the need to interact with administrators.  Eventually I stopped caring.  I had one goal in mind.

Ahh, but then came private practice and the networking game and my skills came back to me over time.  Networking is being popular.  Being popular is being liked.  Being liked is being a leader.  Being a leader is standing up and being recognized.  It doesn’t happen overnight, but as I went along in networking, I became more comfortable with the process.  I began to like more people and, in turn, began to notice that they liked me.  My personality shined through easier, that personality that had been so slow to arrive in high school, then blossomed in college, only to be repressed in law school. 

So the chance to go back to my high school reunion was the chance to go back as a new person, someone who wasn’t around in high school, someone who had a larger confidence, a terrific life, a successful life, a tremendous amount of friends and a fantastic wife and family.  I felt as if I had conquered the world and was returning home as its golden boy.  I felt as if I wasn’t going to the reunion to see anyone in particular, but that they were going to see me.

Ok, so maybe I got a little bit of a big head, huh?

Ahh well, we can all be super in our own minds, right?  There is nothing wrong with that, because it is that self-perception that creates such confidence.  And so what if no one at the reunion was particularly excited to see me.  I was simply excited to be there, feeling as I was 180 degrees different from high school.

Like she says in “Never Been Kissed,” I did find out who I was and I embraced it.  I may not have been popular in high school, but I sure feel pretty darn popular now because of all of you.

Have a great week.

“But what I do have are a very particular set of skills…”

Friends:

It’s Father’s Day and interestingly enough I’ve had a lot of time this weekend to ponder the role of the father, what with all of the movies that I watched this weekend that celebrate the father.  First, it was “Field of Dreams” and the obligatory tears being shed when Ray asks his dad if he wants to have a catch.  And then it was “Taken 2,” the Liam Neeson flick in which he risks life and limb to save his daughter yet again from the bad guys of Europe.  As I sat watching those films, I couldn’t help but think about the important role a father plays in his children’s life.  On second thought, I couldn’t help but think about the important role that both father and mother play in their children’s lives. 

In my practice, I typically see the families when they are at their worst, when the siblings are at each other’s throats, when they are wasting money and precious time fighting about what in some instances are trivial matters.  And I wonder about the parents of these children.  Usually they are already passed away by the time I get involved, but nevertheless I wonder who these parents were and what type of household they ran and, in some instances, what they could possibly have done wrong to set the sequence of events in motion which led to the instant dispute amongst the children.

You would love to think that the mantra of “Mom loved you best” is specious but in many situations that is accurate; mom did love one child best and thus chose to leave more of her money to one child over another.  Yet after meeting some of these children, it isn’t hard to figure out that maybe mom had a reason for loving one more than the other.  It certainly raises the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg.  Or, to put it another way, what came first:  the disproportionate love or the child who rebelled.  Because I would hate to think that a parent would knowingly and deliberately choose to love one child more than another.  However, if one child was always acting up, didn’t want to behave, refused to follow instructions and flat out defied her parents, then I can see why a parent might “choose” the good one over the naughty one.  Parents are humans just like anybody else—they like who they like and they dislike who they dislike. 

But the difficult part about being a parent is that there is no guidebook, no instruction manual.  You need to take a test to drive a car but anyone can have kids.  Sure there are classes and books on how to raise kids, but those classes and books are not definitive on the topic.  It isn’t like parenting is a discipline like mathematics, for which there is always a solution founded in logic.  If every child is different, then how can a book or a class prepare a parent for situations that may never have happened before? 

One of the things overlooked about the movie “Field of Dreams” is that the main character, Ray, is trying to recapture a relationship with his father.  When he was 17 he said a nasty thing to his father and walked out, not to return again until his father’s funeral, which by that time it was too late to rectify the relationship.  It is confounding to me when I hear about parents who don’t talk to their children, who let their children walk out or who tell them to leave and not return.  I know it happens, I am not naïve; I know this isn’t just a Hollywood dramatization.  But perhaps I have been living in a dreamland that is not founded on reality.

Which makes my family that much more special; because I see the worst of families.  I hear the horror stories of fathers who were abusive and mean and terrifying or mothers who were outspoken about their love for one child over another or who were too self-involved to devote the necessary time to their children. 

When I was growing up I didn’t really pay much attention to Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.  We certainly celebrated the holidays, but I don’t remember feeling any differently towards my parents on those days than on any other days.  I hope they didn’t believe that special days of the year were necessary so that we might show them the requisite appreciation.  I would like to think that I showed them that appreciation on a daily basis because I understood how important they were and how much of an impact they had on my life, and that I didn’t need to give them a greeting card on a specified day of the year to show it. 

But now that I am a parent and I see how difficult a job that is and I see the sacrifices a parent makes on a daily basis and how life-changing becoming a parent can be and how sometimes being a parent means being a rule enforcer or putting a foot down, I have a newfound appreciation for my parents, something that I would not have ever been able to comprehend had I never had children.

And I realize how important the little things can be.  Sometimes it really is just taking one day of the year to recognize the mother and the father.  With life moving so quickly it is easy to lose sight of how important some people are and how we oftentimes take them for granted.  I constantly need to remind myself not to take my parents for granted because I see how the familial bond can irreparably be broken and how it is sometimes a result of the parents’ failings.  It just makes me want to work harder at not only showing my appreciation for my parents but also at demonstrating to my children how unconditionally I love them and how they can depend upon me and how I will never ever ever leave them to fend for themselves.

Just like in “Taken,” the parent needs to be willing to sacrifice everything for his/her child.  If the parent doesn’t instill that love and devotion to his or her children, then how do we expect our children to instill it in their children? 

To put a cap on the weekend, as we were driving to dinner at my parents’ house for Father’s Day, a Marvin Gaye song came on the radio and I was immediately struck by the irony of it—on Father’s Day, listening to a song by a man who was killed by his own father…

You know what, Dad, I’m ready to have a catch any day of the week…

I hope you all had a great Father’s Day and a great Mother’s Day last month—and that you take a moment to reflect on all of the sacrifices your parents had to make and the countless hours they spent raising you to be the person you are today.  Sometimes a card on a select Sunday of the year just isn’t enough, right?

Have a great week.

Is Estate Planning A Farce??

Friends:

Is estate planning a farce?  Does it really provide as many benefits as promised?

Estate planning is one of the largest practice areas in the legal field.  Planning for one’s ultimate passing and taking steps to ensure that loved ones are taken care of and assets are distributed to the right people is a valuable and important endeavor.  And I know quite a few estate planning attorneys; all of them are not only terrific in the actual documentation of their clients’ wishes, but they are all tremendously sympathetic and understanding of the difficulties facing their clients.  Addressing one’s own mortality can be quite challenging.

It is common in preparing an estate plan for a lawyer to prepare a trust, a will, a durable power of attorney and an advance health care directive.  The great benefit of a trust is not only its use in avoiding the probate process, but it also provides for a seamless transition of authority; if the trustee of the trust is unable to act, no court action should be necessary to bring the successor trustee into the fold.  Additionally, a durable power of attorney permits the appointment of an agent-in-fact to act should the creator be incapacitated or unable to act in his/her own interests.  If an agent-in-fact is in place, a conservatorship is unnecessary and the court processes can be avoided.  And, moreover, this process allows the creators to control who makes decisions for them and it is not incumbent upon the court to make such decisions.

Well, friends, I am here to tell you that I am concerned that all of the money and time spent in preparing these estate plans is all for naught.

Take this example:  A woman creates a trust and nominates her youngest son to be her trustee if she is unable to care for her own needs.  She also executes a power of attorney that nominates her youngest son to act as her agent if she is unable to do so.  Older son, however, is not kept in the loop about his mom’s financial situation and he believes that his mother is incapacitated, so he files a petition to have himself appointed as her conservator.  Even though mom has already indicated her wishes as to who should take care of her finances and has appointed her younger son as her agent under the durable power of attorney and as her successor trustee, the court seemingly is unwilling to dismiss the conservatorship petition outright.  In fact, now that the court process has been commenced, older son may be entitled to investigate not only mom’s mental state, but also her financial situation.  Mom had her own reasons for choosing one son over the other to care for her interests, but now that the older son has filed his petition, it seems like it’s now becoming a “free for all” with mom’s specific wishes and instructions being ignored.  That was $10,000 in estate planning fees wasted.  But why does the court so easily dismiss mom’s specific wishes?  It makes no sense to me, but that’s what is going on right now.

Or take this example:  Mom creates a trust and provides that if she is deemed to be incapacitated by two doctors then her son shall become the new trustee.  Mom voluntarily moves from her house to a retirement home and decides to sell her home.  Son doesn’t want the home sold because he will inherit the home when mom dies, so son gets two doctors to write letters that mom is incapacitated and son uses that as a basis to take over the trust.  Son then contacts all of the parties to the sale of the property and threatens to sue them if they continue with the sale.  Mom doesn’t know any of this is going on but when she does find out, she goes to two other doctors, both of whom write letters that say that she is not incapacitated.  Well, what gives then?  If the son’s purposes for taking over the trust and interfering with the sale of the property are selfish, what can mom do?  She has been deemed to be incapacitated so she theoretically cannot enter into a contract with an attorney to represent her to pursue her son, so what can be done?  A conservatorship action?

Want to hear more?  Just ask, I have plenty of them.  None of them seem to make any sense, but what they seem to have in common is the court’s unwillingness to follow the creator’s specific wishes. 

The vast majority of estate planning is straightforward and, like any type of relationship, hiccup-free.  No difficult issues to address, no problems with administration, everything goes smoothly.  But I am afraid that we will be seeing more and more of the issues coming to light because of greedy family members, warring siblings and struggles for control.  And unless the court takes a hard-line stance on these things, it looks like more court involvement will be necessary.  How this will be affected by the court closures and budget-cuts is clear—inefficiency in the court, lengthier processes and significantly less being accomplished.  Why the courts let this stuff happen is really anybody’s guess.  But if things continue the way they seem to be going, the courts are going to more and more make estate planning attorneys look like liars.  And that is truly bad for business and, more importantly, detrimental to the interests of the clients.

Have a great week.