I’m a little guy and a pacifist. To the best of my memory, I’ve only been in two fistfights in my life. I don’t believe in force or violence…except that, sometimes I wish I were considerably larger so I could assert myself a bit more strongly.
In this case, however, I wouldn’t have cared how big the fellow was. I’d have done it anyway. I just probably wouldn’t have been quite so successful.
Fellow calls up to make an appointment with me because he says his sister wants to make a will. My secretary made an appointment for the sister, but she showed up with her brother and his wife in tow. The brother insisted – over my objections, but with the consent of his sister – on coming into my office with the client.
During the interview, it turned out that my client was widowed with three children, none of whom met the approval of the brother.
“Ma’am, may I assume that you want your estate to go equally to your three children?” I asked.
“No, she doesn’t,” the brother answered for her. “She wants it to go to me. And if I’m dead, to my kids.”
“Is that true, ma’am?” She nodded.
“I told you that. Now write it up,” the brother said.
“Sir, I really have to have the answers from Mrs. _____, and not from you.”
“I know what she wants. Just ask her.”
For about ten minutes, as I tried to explore the reasons for leaving her own children out of her will, the client said almost nothing. Brother answered every question I asked. Sister sat there meekly agreeing with him, but it was obvious that she was afraid of him.
Finally I had enough. “Mr. ____, I’m going to have to ask you to go wait outside while I talk to your sister alone.”
“She said it was OK for me to be here. Ask her again if you don’t believe me.”
“Sir, I want to talk…I intend to talk to your sister in private. Now please have a seat outside.”
“You can’t make me leave!” he yelled. “I have a right to be here! She’s my sister!”
“Sir, I’m not going to tell you again. Now go out to the waiting room and wait!”
Luckily for me, the fellow was slightly smaller even than I am and probably about as old as I am now, which is to say old. When he refused to leave, I came around from behind my desk, placed a hand under his armpit and another on his elbow, lifted him out of the chair and guided him out of the office. But as I was closing the door behind him, he started pushing the door the other way, bulling his way back in, screaming all the while.
Pacifist that I am, I’ve always wanted to do this: I grabbed a handful of his jacket and shirt collar from the back and hustled him out of the office like tossing a drunk out of a saloon. Then I locked the door. He stood there screaming and pounding on the door for a while before he finally realized that he wasn’t coming back in.
When the noise subsided, I gently pried out of the woman that she loved her kids and didn’t want to leave them out of her will, but that she couldn’t stand up to her brother. Their parents had been first-generation Portuguese and they were brought up in the old school in which the eldest male is the patriarch of the entire extended family.
I got the information I needed and told the client I would write the will the way she wanted it and that her brother had no right to read her will or ask her what was in it.
When I opened the door to my office, brother was instantly in my face demanding to know what we talked about.
“I’m sorry, sir, but that is a private matter between your sister and me. You’ll be able to find out what’s in her will after she dies.”
They left, I wrote the will and my secretary left a message on the client’s answering machine to say it was ready to be reviewed and signed.
Not surprisingly, the client never returned the call and never returned to my office.