A Call from a Lawyer

My brother, sister, and I got a call from the lawyer asking us to come to the reading of Pop’s will. We didn’t know why, but we went. Everyone there was a son or daughter of Pop’s, and then there was us three. When we were all there, the lawyer started to read the will. My grandma and Pop had written it up with a different lawyer, so this lawyer was reading it for the first time. As he read along, things were going well. Then all of a sudden, he came across a part saying, “Earl’s children—my oldest sister at that time wasn’t a Price, but she was known as Price.” Then he said, “Stop, stop. Can someone explain this?”

My Aunt Mildred said she could, and then she went on and told the story of how Earl had taken her as his daughter but never adopted her legally. Then the lawyer said, “I have always known you as Price.”

She said, “Yes, legally my last name isn’t Price, but I have always gone by Price.”

“What about school? Didn’t you go by Price?” he asked.

“I have always gone by Price, even in school,” she replied.

He couldn’t believe that she was registered in school as Price, and no one knew this was not her legal name. Even her high school diploma said Price. The whole island knew her as Earl’s daughter, and no one ever questioned it.

Then the lawyer said to us, “I will throw it in, to having your sister’s name legally changed. Since you are over eighteen years old, I could have your name changed legally if you would like.” Then he asked, “What about your daughter? What is her last name?”

She said, “I listed my daughter as Price on her birth certificate even though I wasn’t, and yes, I would love to have my name legally changed to Price.”

“Then consider it done. I will take care of it for you,” he replied. “Okay, back to where we were on the will.”

He read on, and it said that Earl’s three children would be getting Earl’s share of the estate.

I was surprised. I had no idea this was in the will. Then he kept on reading, and he came to a part where one of my aunts had borrowed some money from them, and it hadn’t been paid back. Well, again, it involved the three of us, and then the lawyer asked us if we would step outside with him. We followed him out of the room, and he took us outside. “Okay, this is how I see this. Your aunt owes the estate five thousand dollars. You have two choices: you can have her pay this money to the estate, then it will have to be added to my fee to process it, or you can say she doesn’t have to pay it back. And if you choose this option, then you will see about one hundred dollars less in the cash that you three would have gotten. So she can pay the five thousand, and you will get one hundred more each, or you let her off and get one hundred less.”

Then he said he would go into the front office and wait for our decision. He stepped inside, and we all looked at each other and said, “We really don’t have a choice. She is our aunt, and we didn’t know we were even getting anything. Anyway, for three hundred dollars, for her to pay five thousand is crazy.” We all agreed, so we walked into the front office and told the lawyer we were going to drop the debt.

Then we all walked into the meeting room with him. “Okay, I have talked to the children about Earl’s inheritance, and I presented to them about their aunt’s debt to the estate and gave them the choice to drop the debt or have it left in the will, being they would be the ones to benefit from this debt.”

Well, my other aunt, who was the financial person in the family, was staring at us. When he told them we were going to drop the debt, if she could have spat wooden nickels at us, she would have. When he was finished, he told us, “I will finalize the will and put all of Jessie’s and Harold Price’s wishes into motion.” We were finished. The lawyer added, “Thank you all for coming, and I will be in touch with all of you.”

My Uncle William said, “Thank you, from all of us, for all you have done, and we will wait for your phone call.”

We all walked out of the office and outside. As we were all walking out, the lawyer walked out of the office and said, “Wait, I need to talk to Babe and Debbie for a minute.” The two of us went back inside. The lawyer said, “There was something that was asked of me, and I almost forgot to address it. Debbie, your aunt asked about Harold’s car.”

I said, “What? You’ve got to be kidding. We just let her off a debt, and she still wants my car!”

The lawyer replied, “Your pop had the right to sell you his car. So, it’s okay, Debbie. The car is yours. I just wanted to tell your aunt in front of you. It was just a verbal agreement, and he had every right to sell you the car if that was what he wanted to do.”

I said right in front of her to the lawyer, “Can we change our decision?”

“Of course, you can, if you really want to.”

Well, the look on her face was, Oh my God, what did I do?

I said, “No, family is family, not to say much about her feeling of family. But if I had known about this before I made the choice I did, she would have had to pay back the estate,” I told him.

When we walked out the door, everyone had left except my sister and brother. Our aunt walked right to her car and left. My sister said, “What was that all about? We could hear you from out here.” I told them what had happened, and they both said, “What? She really did that?” I said yes, she did. Then I also told them about asking if we could change our minds about the money, and he said we could. Then I mentioned if I had known before she had done that, I wouldn’t have voted the way I did. Turns out the lawyer was watching us talk and then walked outside and asked if we needed to talk to him again. My sister said, “No, but I wish we had known this before because it would have been different for sure. But we are better than her. We will stick to our decision, but thanks for asking.” He did say to us that he felt we made the proper decision. Then we walked over to my car and left-yes, my car.

When we got home, Mom asked how things went. We told her first about the car matter, then the fact that we let her off the debt, and that my sister was finally going to be a Price. Well, that was quite a bit more than she thought we were going to tell her, but she was happy that we were mature about it. Not to speak badly of a certain family member, but she told us that she wasn’t surprised at all.

In a few weeks, we got a letter from the lawyer’s office asking us to stop down to get our checks. So the next day, we called and asked if we needed an appointment, or could we just stop by? The secretary said we could just stop down during office hours, and she had them ready for us. So we got in the car and went down. The lawyer was in the back meeting room when we got there, and the secretary called him and told him we had come for our checks. He stepped out of his meeting and shook our hands and said, “You three made your grandfather proud, I’m certain.” He reached over and took the envelopes from his secretary and handed them to us. We said thank you very much to him, and then he said to my sister that she would get an official letter from the state when her name change became official.

We didn’t know how much the checks were, but I knew I would use it for a special thing later on, so I put it in my bank account.