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8:59:00 PM PDT
The Beginning of a Personal Crisis: Part II
River Organization: The Alpha
Chapter I
The Beginning of a Personal Crisis: Part II (Conclusion)
(Please read Part I first; found in the previous entry below.)
The plane touched down in New York some five and a half hours later. It was only 1 degree when the plane landed in New York. It was 57 degrees when I had left Las Vegas. Although I was wearing a trench coat with a wool liner over a three-piece business suit I was freezing. I hadn’t been in New York in the winter months in ten years. By the time I had arrived in New York in the middle of the night and received my rental car, I had received a number of phone calls from surviving family members who were waiting up and inviting me to stay with them. I had lost 14 members of my family over the decade since I had lived in Las Vegas. Family was precious to me. It was a difficult decision, since I wanted to be with family, and I knew they wanted to be with me, but I had decided to get a hotel room. I knew that I was the executor of the estate and I knew I would need the private time to pour over the mountain of paperwork I knew I would soon be faced with.
In the morning, I went directly to the funeral home and met with the director of the funeral home and some members of my family. In addition to making the funeral arrangements, selecting the casket and paying for the initial upfront costs required I informed the director that I insisted on a full military-honors funeral. The director informed me that I needed to present the deceased’s military discharge papers in order for the honor guards to perform a military funeral. That was understandable. But it was also a nightmare throwing a monkey wrench into my plans to coordinate the other things I needed to do in order to conduct my responsibilities the deceased had assigned me. I did not know where those DD 214 (discharge papers) were. I didn’t have a clue, and I had a number of estate beneficiaries I needed to locate and did not know where they resided. Tracking them down would be a time consuming event. I demanded that a full military honors funeral take place with no excuses and no exceptions. The funeral would not go forward until that was arranged, I insisted, the combat soldier deserved military honors. A funeral was not something which could be undone once done.
I was faced with these two tasks, finding the DD 214 and locating relatives in time for the funeral less than 12 hours off the plane.
Then I was off to the estate attorney’s office where I announced the situation at hand. This estate attorney, I had selected out of being placed in a time is of the essence situation several years earlier when my relative and friend was in ICU for a different life-threatening situation in which he was not expected to survive, but did.
The estate attorney had never been changed since that time and the Will had never been changed either. That is something of which I must place most of the blame upon myself. The attorney read the Will to me and informed me I was responsible, as estate executor, to pay all estate debt with my own funds. (Something I learned much later to be inaccurate after pouring through the New York State Law Library via my computer in Nevada and the fact that the Will clearly stated that I should not be, for any reason, held personally responsible to pay for any portion of the estate’s debt. In addition, if the estate beneficiaries could not make a peaceful decision on the distribution of assets in category as he chose for his love ones to select from, then I was empowered to make those fair and equitable decisions.) This attorney drafted the Will. It is his own language which he used and which was put into the Will. Now several years later I discover that language was defective. And the attorney was not qualified to handle estates. Furthermore, I should have had the hindsight of advising that the Will be changed to a Living Trust once the danger had pass of that time of urgency and I had failed to do so. Or at least, I should have raised the discussion and consideration thereof. But folks, talking to someone about their Will isn’t all that easy.
Needless to say, I had my hands full during this time period of unexpected events which although I knew would eventually arrive, I was still unprepared for. I called work in Las Vegas and ask that my paycheck and one-week vacation pay be sent directly to one of my New York banks. A week later, I needed yet another week’s vacation pay to be sent. I had extended my stay in New York from a planned three or four day stay to a week and then two weeks. Although I had twenty-thousand dollar credit lines on credit cards with zero balances, of which I then used for flights, rental car, hotel room, and changes of those due to an extended stay and such, I also had my personal bills needing to be paid in Nevada. So I needed money placed into my checking account so that I could handle those obligations while in New York without tapping into my savings or investments. I had now used up two of the three weeks vacation time I had coming in pay in order to manage my personal affairs while dealing with the estate affairs.
I hunted for the DD 214 or discharge papers which was most paramount on my mind in order for the military honors to be performed for one whom so deserved it. I was also busy, as the estate attorney was in trying to locate the missing relatives who needed to be found.
I hadn’t driven in snow for more than a decade, now I was navigating and working about in weather I personally wouldn’t care if I ever saw again.
Eventually, everybody was found that needed to be found. The military performed the funeral service without the documents needed based on numerous personal testimony, and internal investigations to the fact of evidence of service. After the fact, I provided the funeral home with documents needed once I had found them with the signature of General Westmoreland, Army commander of U.S. forces in Nam, to forward to the Honor Guard. So the first two priorities were achieved and along with the funeral being behind me, I could move forward into the affairs of the estate.
The stress was phenomenal, yet now I had to dig into the estate stuff and in the two weeks I managed to administer the things I needed to get done, and assign to-do lists for those in New York volunteering to help.
From that point on I had a miserable time trying to conduct the things I needed to get done while back home in Las Vegas. I immediately purchased the headstone and arranged for the military plaque to be affixed to it. Of course, the memorial company couldn’t perform the installation until after the ground thawed in New York. In the meantime, once weather conditions were favorable, I had them recondition other headstones in the family grave site. Of which, the memorial company sent me photos of the before and after work which I found satisfactory. Friends and relatives in New York verified everything done on the part of the memorial company was satisfactory, so I was relieved this was done and over with less something happen to me.
But dealing with the idiots at banks and attorneys and creditors and utility companies and so forth in which I had to deal with drained me both physically and mentally. It was not only time consuming it was down right frustrating. Often I had to repeat the minutest details. Simple things like the mailing address procedures for them to send estate mail to me had to be repeated again and again. With 10,000 people a month who are moving into Vegas and 5,000 people moving out each month the postal workers are bald, even the women, from pulling their hair out. In Vegas, people move in, move up, move down and move out, constantly. It is not Hometown America, where the postal workers know everybody on the street.
It seemed some people I had to communicate with didn’t even know how to use C/O (in Care Of) when addressing envelopes to me on estate matters. Even after I had told them it was imperative that they did so. So, some vital mail was not reaching me, sometimes lost and sometimes sent back undelivered. Sometimes we have to work if a computer program doesn’t allow enough space for proper addressing, so handwrite the address in then, is how I replied. Another thing, I demanded that all communications be in writing. I would not take or make telephone calls, except for limited cases, for doing so I could not keep the legal records I may later need as proof to support any claims I may have needed to make on behalf of the estate. Many of those I had to deal with were reluctant to place things in writing and that in and of itself raised red flags in my mind. Also, I was extremely busy running five departments once I had returned to work and didn’t have the time to be constantly interrupted. I had been gone for two week. I was buried trying to catch up. My work load was increasing and so was the workload of my boss.
My immediate boss in the used car department; the used-car manager and used-car buyer had recently been promoted to General Sales Manager, in addition to his previous positions. So this created additional work loads for both of us. We worked together like a machine, as he would often say. But that machine was now running dry of oil and lubrication and was heating up magnificently. It was about to overheat and breakdown because of the intense friction. As it was, a number of beneficiaries of the estate constantly contacted me during work hours to ask me questions or provide me with information I needed on developments back in New York. This was just something which was necessary and couldn’t be helped. But nevertheless, it made it extremely difficult to manage the estate from nearly 3,000 miles away.
For the most part, I relied on email and saw no reason why anyone I had to deal with on the business end of the estate couldn’t use email to communicate as well. Except for exceptional cases, such as sending billing statements, or documents needing signing, emailing correspondence was an effective way to communicate and quite timely. It was also an effective way to keep records. However some I had to deal with didn’t want to cooperate on any of the methods of conducting estate business that I had suggested. This frustrated me to no end.
I was now having all of my free time away from my job, nights and on weekends, consumed with handling estate affairs. Sometimes it was necessary to interrupt my work to handle estate affairs during week day business hours in New York, and this only put me farther behind on the job.
I could not and would not betray the trust that the one who chose me for his estate executor had in me. Therefore I could not turn the administration of the estate over to someone else. The next best thing to do then was to leave my job and finish and settle the estate before returning to it. It was an unfortunate decision and quite frankly made while under phenomenal pressure and during such stressful activities. I later greatly regretted the decision. Not only did I regret it, I carried a huge amount of guilt on my shoulders since leaving the “A Company” would dump a phenomenal workload on to those I had left behind. These were people who trusted me and who was part of a very special team.
I was burned out even before going to New York. I could not recover with the additional burden of the estate. I could have handled my multiple positions on my job with no problem, but I could handle no more. If I had spread my three weeks vacation time throughout the year, taking a vacation at the end of every four-month period, and enjoying some serious R&R, I could have easily recovered each stage of exhaustion.
The workload of the estate sent me over the edge. But it wasn’t something anyone could do anything about. No one was directly to blame for the situation which felt like a Mega-Tsunami which hit me with the full force of waves of destruction that led to financial disaster. So, unfortunately, I gave up my job. My entire disposition had changed for the worst and I was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was no longer meek. My attitude was sour. In fact there was nothing meek about me….
I not only left behind a great career, I left behind a great team and great friends. The only thing that was on my mind was getting that estate settled and getting it settled exactly as the war hero had instructed me to settle it, no excuses and no exceptions. And that is exactly what I had intended on doing.
Thank You For Joining Me & God Bless You.
And Always Remember, JESUS LOVES YOU!
River
Las Vegas, Nevada
Sunday, 11 May 2008
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I hadn't realized how complicated being an executor of a will can be... your situation was compounded by the distance.... you were obliged to fulfill your responsibility, and you did. It is unfortunate that you had very little help or good counsel during this time. Your faith is strong... yours is an incredible story of committment, honor, and courage. Be well. bea
http://journals.aol.com/bgilmore725/Wanderer/ -
Thank you so much for giving us the info into your background. It makes reading your words so much more poignant..and I look forward very muich to reading lots more in the future,,,,there is one thing for sure our dear Lord was there with you all the way even though you might not have felt lik eit at times. It is sometimes only when we look back that we actually see his footprints. Love Sybil xx
5/31/08 2:44 PM