I saw him twice over the holiday weekend.
First when he set his “for sale” sign back up. It had been knocked down by Hurricane Irene. I heard the dogs barking and when I looked out front I saw him out there. It was just a few minutes.
The second time was equally short. He rode past in his boat Sunday afternoon. Just a ride past and a long look, then he turned around and sped past my dock to whack my boat with his wake. Typical.
We’re left with tons of furniture we can’t use, mostly antiques handed down from my mother’s family. I’m not really thrilled with antiques. I appreciate fine woodworking and all that, but in my own home I want furniture I can use. I’d much rather have a table I can set a glass on without worrying about leaving a permanent mark than some ancient heirloom you can’t touch.
Once upon a time not so very long ago I’d have turned the lot over to Jim and let him figure out what to do with it all. I’m still tempted to do that now, but he made such a stink about getting his fair share of everything. I’ll probably just turn it all over to the Hospice Thrift Store.
Holy cow! After all the fuss Jim made about his lot, and about how all he wanted all his life was to retire to a house on his lot on the shores of Nassawadox Creek, he’s selling it.
I guess he was expecting me to pay his legal bills.
I almost ran into him at a pig roast over Memorial Day weekend. I was there taking pictures and he showed up in the crowd. He seemed to be alone. It was weird. He’s been suing me for one thing or another for so long that I don’t expect to see him anywhere but at the courthouse with a couple of lawyers in tow.
I should have said “Hello.” I wish I had said “Hello.” I can’t yet. Every time I envision talking to Jim, I can’t think of anything I might say. What can I say to someone who has been uniformly rude and insulting to me since the day I was born?
I could have at least said “Hello.” You can say that much to a dog. Instead I’ve got him shoved over into the grey zone with panhandlers, pamphleteers, and Salvation Army bell ringers. Just another stranger I don’t want to know. Why not leave him there? The world holds many unpleasant people — just ignore them and concentrate on the nice ones. Why go out of my way to be nice to an asshole?
When Pop was in the hospital shortly before the end, the last thing he asked of me was to try to get along with Jim. I must say, Jim sure doesn’t make it easy! But truthfully, the legal crap hardly matters. It’s the fifty or so years before that I’m having trouble with. I’m sure he’s not going to make it any easier, and he’s got to be plenty steamed about how all his legal wrangling turned out. And of course he has that whole “asshole” thing going.
In an earlier post I promised to tell how Jim got Pop to sign a new will in his benefit.
In July of 2005, after more than a year of family wrangling and ceaseless badgering from Lizzy, Pop gave in and changed his will to give Lizzy more land. Jim had been campaigning for more land too, but not as effectively as his sister. They both wanted more money too, but Pop had other ideas about that. The only change Pop made was to give Lizzy more land.
Jim didn’t like that, so about a month later he took Pop out to lunch.
When they got back, Pop’s sitter described him as being “like in a stupor”. She called Irene, who rushed home and, well, I’ll let her tell it herself:
Q So you get home. What did —
A Jim was outside working on his boat. Doctor H was sitting on the porch with Libby and I went out there and asked him how he was feeling and what was going on and that Thom wasn’t around and could I help him with his problem.Q Okay.
A And he told me that he had gone out to lunch with Jim. He had signed something he didn’t think he should have signed; and I said, Well, why don’t we just ask Jim for a copy of it?Q Okay.
A Jim refused to give his father a copy of it.Q Was that the end of it?
A No. I told Jim that I could make a copy of it. I had a copier, and he said that he needed to speak to his lawyer before he could see if his father could get a copy of what he had signed or not; and at that point in time Jim left.
It didn’t stop there, of course. The more Pop sobered up, the more he wanted to know what he had signed. Over the next few days he called Jim demanding to know what he had signed. Jim steadfastly refused to tell him. Pop called his lawyer, who called Jim’s lawyer, who pressured him into recanting:
The closest Jim has ever come to an apology
The type came out a little small. It reads:
September 13, 2005
Pop,
The agreement was causing so much trouble that I decided it would be best to destroy it. Enclosed is the signature block as proof that the agreement has been destroyed.
/s/ Jim
This was accompanied by something purported to be the signature block from Jim’s alternate will. Pop’s reply was typically gracious:
Pop's reply to Jim
If you’re having trouble with the handwriting, here’s what it says:
9-20-05
Dear Jim:
You will never know how much joy & relief your recent letter gave me. At least I hope you don’t. I had spent many hours wondering what I could do to bring satisfaction among me & you children. I wanted us all to be happy about the division of my estate. So let’s go with it and have peace and tranquility from now on. “My love and best wishes to you all.”
Yours Truly
Did that end it? Sort of, for a little while. They stopped setting up secret meetings with lawyers or showing up with papers for Pop to sign, but from that point on Jim and his whole family were just about as rude to us as you can imagine anyone being. Right to our faces, all the time, and his kids too. I never said anything because I didn’t want to upset Pop, and Jim’s been rude to me all my life so that was nothing new. But I will never forgive them for how they treated my wife. She took care of Mom & Pop when they couldn’t be bothered, and she’s never been anything but nice to them. The way they treated her was a sin.
That’s where things stood for the next year and a bit. Then Pop passed away, and a few weeks later Jim’s lawyer started serving papers on me. His initial complaint cited 47 separate accusations of wrongdoing on my part, covering a broad spectrum of more things than one could readily imagine, but I think Libby summed it up the best:
Q Okay. Do you know what this case is about at all?
A Not really. Just that they’re not satisfied with what Doctor Henderson left them. That’s all I can get out of it.
Though Pop may have passed away, Jim’s Alternate Will wasn’t dead yet. Early on in the lawsuit he tried to introduce it into evidence to get it accepted in place of Pop’s real will. Turns out he was lying when he told Pop it was destroyed.
Good thing I saved the evidence.
Here’s another one Jim sued me for. He wanted me to reimburse Pop’s estate for Pop’s utility bills:
There are some interesting assumptions here.
I’m not sure why he thought I should pay for Pop’s electric bill, except maybe he figured that if Pop was blind then he’d just sit around in the dark all the time. Pop wasn’t really blind, of course. He had macular degeneration which kept him from driving, but he could still read and get by. If anything he needed more lights than ever.
The heating oil almost makes sense, if you assume that Pop would have used the heat more with us there than he would have otherwise, except that he didn’t. Pop lived downstairs and we lived upstairs. When we were downstairs with Pop we were in rooms he would have been heating anyway, and he wasn’t turning the heat up for us; he liked it hotter than we did. We did not turn on the heat upstairs; enough heat came up from downstairs that it was not necessary.
In fact, we lowered Pop’s heating oil bill considerably. We fixed a lot of windows and repaired his storm windows to cut down on drafts, which cut his heating oil bill in half. But the best part is the firewood.
Mom and Pop had a wood burning stove in the kitchen. In very cold weather they’d use it to keep the kitchen toasty warm while they set the thermostats way low in the rest of the house. They had an electric heater in the bathroom, and in really cold weather they would shuttle back and forth between those two enclaves of warmth. After Mom passed away and Pop had his heart trouble he was not able to keep it up, so we took over.
They say firewood warms you many times over. I thought about that a lot when I was splitting and stacking firewood. I had lots of time to do that. It takes awhile to split and stack a cord of wood, and we went through three or four cords each winter. A cord of wood looks like a lot of wood until you start using it. When you’re counting on firewood for heat, you go through a lot of firewood. Keeping that wood stove fed was a lot of work.
But I did not mind. It was good exercise, and it was the only way Pop could afford to keep a room “old folks hot” in the coldest weather. Still, after Pop passed away one of the first things we did was replace that wood-hungry beast with a propane heater. It costs a little more to run, but you don’t have to split and stack propane.
So get a load of this. For years Irene and I worked our tails off splitting, stacking, and hauling firewood in order to help Pop hold down his heating bills, and Jim didn’t think we did enough. He wanted us to pay for the wood too.
Here’s another one. Jim sued me for $822.38 for boat repairs.
Pop owned two boats, and in the last six years of his life he spent $822.38 on maintaining them. Jim held that at 90 years of age Pop wasn’t using the boats himself, so that money must have really been spent on me and I should reimburse the estate for it. Except that I have my own boat. I didn’t use Pop’s boats. So why was Pop spending money keeping up boats he didn’t need and didn’t use?
Pop kept his boats in good repair for Jim’s benefit, so that he and his children could use them when they came to visit. And Jim wanted me to pick up the tab.
Here’s one of the things Jim sued me for. He’s upset that Pop didn’t charge me rent when he asked me to move in and take care of him. Jim doesn’t think that’s right, so he sued me for $86,725 in back rent.
Here’s a quote from court records:
both Thom and his wife had the ability to work, and ordinarily no matter where one lives, it is anticipated that they generate some income and that they contribute something to their shared living expenses.
Overlooking, of course, that we did contribute in many ways, just not ones Jim is willing to acknowledge. I don’t just mean intangible ways like contributing to Pop’s quality of life, or indirect ways like enabling Pop to stay in his home, or non-monetary ways like repairs and mowing the lawn. I mean concrete things Jim has just refused to acknowledge, like buying the groceries.
The grocery thing is actually even worse than that. Another thing Jim sued me for is $2,333.99 for groceries. That’s based on Pop having spent $3,111.98 on groceries during the six years we lived with him. Jim figures 3/4 of it was for me, my wife, and our son, and Jim wanted us to reimburse Pop’s estate for it. Notice that Pop is supposed to have fed all four of us on $9.97 a week, and Jim wants $7.58 back. The truth is that Irene was feeding us all, and she spent $71,760 on groceries during that six year period. But don’t expect Jim to acknowledge that.
The legal bills from Jim’s lawsuit have forced us to put the old farmhouse up for sale. We’ve moved into my father-in-law’s house. It’s a bit of adjustment. Andy’s place is much smaller than the farmhouse. We’re living much closer together now, but that’s okay.
There is an interesting bit of irony in this. Andy’s house is located next door to the lot Jim plans to retire on. That means that, thanks to Jim’s own actions, we’re going to be neighbors for the rest of our lives.
He sure he didn’t intend it that way. Jim sued Andy a few years ago in an attempt to put him out of his house. He dropped that lawsuit but I fully expect him to file another. You can never really be safe from vindictive lawsuits, and we’re a ripe target for an opportunistic law firm. The farm makes a tempting prize, but we don’t have the money to defend it from predatory lawyers. Jim knows that, and he’s already shown he’s not above exploiting the situation.
As much as I would love to have this whole sordid mess behind us, I’m sure it isn’t over yet. Jim does not want us here, and he’ll do whatever he can to get rid of us. He’d like nothing better than to put me out on the street with nothing, and he’d happily put my whole family out on the street too.
We’re getting settled into our new digs. The beds are almost moved, we’re waiting for a new mattress for our bed and I’m sleeping on the couch until it gets here. Our son is ensconced in his new room and loves it. We moved our coffee maker and my favorite saucepan — that makes it official, this is home now. We don’t live in the farmhouse anymore. For possibly the first time in over three hundred years, the old farm is not anybody’s home. For the first time in my life, none of our family lives there, and it’s all thanks to Jim.
He knows it, too. Here’s a statement Jim made under oath: “I think particularly my father very much wanted one of his children to live at [the farmhouse].” Unfortunately, Jim ostracized himself in the years prior to Pop’s passing with his machinations and unbridled greed, and decided that if it couldn’t be his home then it wouldn’t be mine either. He was the same way with toys when we were children.
