How a Financial Trust Company and a Bunch of Intellectually- and Morally-Lazy Lawyers
Caused My Family to End Up in Unending Financial and Physical DANGER
What happens when educated people—lawyers, in particular—don’t listen carefully or ask questions to check their own (mis-)understanding of something? Can great harm result due to ‘educated professionals’ thinking they’re so damned smart and/or moral about something when they’re not?
“Communicate with the beneficiaries—information should be both incoming and outgoing… Regular communication with beneficiaries can prevent many disagreements between beneficiaries and trustees.” from “The Changing Role of Trustee & Trustee Liability: Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Swan?” (March 10, 2009) by Kathryn H. Smith.
A trust that should have lasted me over 20 years is on the verge of becoming insolvent after six, leaving my family’s safety, security, and survival in peril. Before, I worried about having enough myself to pay for a life-threatening medical crisis; now, I worry about just having enough for food and shelter in the future.
After my mother died (2003), my father told me, their only child, he “should have almost half-a-million dollars for (me)” when he died. I figured that was a slight exaggeration. When he died in 2013, the $400K+ he did have/put in a trust would have been enough to taken care of my family for 20 years or more, but…
In just six years, that $400K has been reduced to the point that the trust is warning there might not be enough to pay my monthly stipend until I die. I’m 55 and won’t get a retirement from any higher ed job I had in the last 30 years in the US and abroad, nor will I get Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
What happened to all the money? Ten days before my father died, his second cousins took $90K from him (more, if you count their using his credit card at gas stations and grocery stores his last weeks). Before he even died, a quarter of my father’s finances had gone to people who’d had no relationship with him in the past 60 years.
Before I learned of that (2015) and shortly after my father’s death (early 2013), I started asking the trust about an amendment for help with a major medical crisis in my or my family’s future. My financial worth before my father died, six months before I turned 50, was ZERO. I knew I won’t have enough for a heart attack or stroke, which costs less in Thailand than in the US but still more than I’m able to save because, for 30 years, I’ve usually had to pay for my uninsured asthma medications, clinic and ER visits, and hospital stays out of pocket. (This and my annual average income of $6,666 during my 30 years in higher ed are why my financial future is totally dependent on the trust.)
For six years, I tried to engage Community First Trust in Arkansas in a dialogue about my family’s need for a medical crisis amendment. (I still have all the emails.) When my repeated attempts were met by trustee rudeness, I got my own lawyer in Little Rock. After my attorney and I started digging, we learned of the $90K misdirected before my father died. (Bank records show his second cousins did nothing with the money during the first year—as if they knew they might have to return it, but CFT did not pursue the questionable transfer until my lawyer threatened them with a lawsuit in 2016 for failure of fiduciary duty.)
The legal costs to me to try and get some action regarding the medical amendment and misdirected $90K have been over $45K (of the $400K my father had). The legal costs to trust principal (my father’s money) have been that much or more, enough that two or three medical crises would where I live would have been covered. All of this began with CFT’s incompetent dealing with my request for a medical crisis amendment and trying to get back that $90K, which should have been in an account my father had added me to as Joint Tenant with Rights of Survivorship in 2010, two and a half years before he died. (He was checked out of the hospital and driven by the defendant to the bank where my name was removed from the account. Dad didn’t leave the truck; he was in hospital pajamas and returned to his deathbed after.)
The $90K the defendants took from my dying father is gone. (Six years later, they have only $5,000 left of the $90,000; money that I would have had to manage for over 20 years, they went through in four.) Tens of thousands in fees (from my father’s assets/principal) to pay lawyers whose communicative skills merit an F are gone. The $45K that I invested trying to get a morally imperative medical crisis amendment to the trust and, after that was denied, trying to recoup $90K that should have come to me is gone. With it, my family’s hope of getting into the safety of a car in a country with the world’s deadliest roads for motorcycle users is gone. (Google “Thailand motorcycle deaths”; you’ll see news stories and shocking videos. If something happens to my wife and child, CFT and my late father’s cousins will be to blame.)
Psychological murder is an end result of narcissistic abuse, which includes financial abuse to the point of ruination. At the core of all of these issues is my late father’s malignant narcissism; making this an even uglier and horrific ordeal is the intractability of lawyers and people at the trust who seem to have no interest in learning something new about the world, knowledge of which learned now could only improve how to address future similar cases and reduce the resultant suffering instead of increasing it. Not one time in six years, however, has anyone working for the trust come back to me with: “These issues seem very important to you. Life or death important. Let’s make sure we understand what you’re asking; then we can go from there.” What I got instead was “You might not like our decisions, but you have to live with them.” (I still have the email.) This is just part of how Community First Trust is complicit in psychological murder and the potential financial ruin of my family despite there having been enough money for over 20 years.) Here are two links describing how psychological murder happens: https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Psychological-Murder and https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/11/11-devastating-signs-youve-been-abused-by-a-malignant-narcissist/ I am the victim of the psychological murder. My own late malignant narcissist father was the perpetrator. Community First Trust and its gang of intellectually-, morally-lazy lawyers are the aiders and abettors. I turned 56 on July 4, most likely my last birthday.
I hope my story interests you. I believe your readers would be outraged by and should want to learn about problems with the trust industry and trust law before they ‘trust a trust’ to take care of their family after they are gone. If you want to learn more of this story, I have a ten-page narrative already written up in MS Word. I will also turn over my Gmail password for verification of all of the correspondence with Community First Trust. My Skype ID is tnixon_ma (there are two of these in search results for that; try both of them as I use only one). I am 11 hours ahead of the East Coast but can arrange for an online interview with 24 hours advance notice. Contact me first and learn all of the story before you contact any of the other players in this horrifying farce.
“I didn’t know that; I need to learn about it” isn’t just an intellectual statement; it’s also a very moral one.
The Cast of Characters
Arkansas (state where the trust is located)
Bill Kerst, CEO/President
Community First Trust
135 Section Line Rd #C1
Hot Springs, Arkansas 71913
(501) 520-3660
Amy Wren, JD/CPA, former trust officer, CFT
Wren Law Firm (or Bank of Ozarks VP?)
11300 Executive Center Dr, Suite A
Little Rock, Arkansas 72211
(501) 223-0025
Jane Strike, JD, former outside attorney in AR for CFT
Now practicing in Malvern, Arkansas. Wife of Pastor Tom Strike
Third Baptist Church
817 W. Young St.
Malvern, Arkansas 72104
(501) 337-7004
Georgia (state where lawsuit is being pursued)
Erin Conner-Jackson, JD, my second attorney, an absolute failure at communicating
Conner and Jackson, PC
1008 Plant Ave.
Waycross, Georgia 31501
(912) 283-4394
Vince Settle, JD, attorney in Georgia for CFT
Thomas & Settle
800 Plant Ave
Waycross, Georgia 31501
(912) 283-0026
I also have the names and contact information for the defendant’s widow and the defendant’s lawyer.
The story in detail…
I had a financially very unrewarding career as a part-time college instructor in the US until I moved abroad 16 years ago. Even then, I ended up living hand-to-mouth. My last jobs three college jobs in the US paid less—less again, and less yet again—than I’d earned as a teaching assistant 15 years before in grad school. In 30 years, I had two in which I earned $25K; the other 25+ years, I earned $12K OR LESS. My total career earnings over nearly 30 years averaged $6,666 per year.
I developed asthma in grad school. I’ve usually had to pay my daily meds, doctor/ER visits, and hospital stays out of pocket. Before my father died, he had to help sometimes. In 1991, I had much needed surgery, which cost him $10K. In 2003, I moved to Asia, where asthma meds cost 10% of what they do in America, and clinic/ER visits are affordable out of pocket. In 2007, I spent a week in an ICU, knocked out and on a respirator because I couldn’t breathe on my own; I didn’t have the $2,000 for the hospital bill, so my father told me to put it on my credit card, and he paid it in the US.
My unending medical expenses combined with meager pay for 30 years made my attempts to build and keep savings a one-step-forward, two-steps-back ordeal. My annual budget (with a $1,500 per month trust stipend) for a family of three: $18K a year from the trust: minus $2,000 a year for school for my child, minus $6,000 a year for rent/utilities, minus $2,500 for my daily asthma meds (NOT including ER or hospital stays). That leaves $7,500 a year for food, daily expenses, and unexpected needs.
“Failure to communicate.” A month after my father died (January, 2013), I started trying to explain to Community First Trust (CFT) trust officer Amy Wren and later Jane Strike, outside attorney hired because she was licensed in the state where my father died, my need for a medical crisis amendment to the trust. Both women were repeatedly dismissive of my entreaties for help in a life-or-death situation; for over a year, I explained the facts above. These two women indeed went to court in 2014 for a Trust Construction for two other reasons, but they never once asked questions of me to check their understanding of what I was asking for. For another year after that, I continued trying to engage them in a dialogue about this issue. I researched trust law and learned trusts can indeed be modified. In June, 2015, I let Wren and Strike know how frustrated I was with their assumptions about me, my father, and the vitally important thing I was asking for. Wren replied: “You might not like our decisions, but you have to live with them.” (I still have the email.) A life-or-death matter for me, my wife, and our child? No, I don’t like their decisions. No, I don’t have to live with them. And, no, we don’t have to die because of them!
I found and retained an attorney in Little Rock. I think the trustee’s snarky reply to me as well as the just cause of my repeated and repeatedly denied requests caught Matt House’s attention. Sadly, even with Matt’s help, the trust’s tag team lawyers hemmed and hawed. Strike, doing her best impersonation of a self-appointed Supreme Court Justice, gave the excuse: “There’s nothing in the trust paperwork that justifies seeking a court’s opinion.” After two more months, she said it was possible to ask the trust advisors (Why not the first time we asked? A way for her to bill more ‘work’?), people chosen by my father before he died: his second cousins (my father and I were only children; my mother died before he did).
Another thing about the trust advisors, people who have say-so whether and how the trust can be modified: they are also remainder beneficiaries; i.e., if I predecease them, they get the remainder of the money; i.e., if I die because I can’t afford and seek help for a life-threatening medical crisis, they get the money. Conflict of interest? Yes. Matt and I pointed it out before Wren and Strike sent the amendment to people who likely could not understand what they read (was probably poorly written by trust lawyers to begin with). Guess what! The trust advisors/remainder beneficiaries turned it down: they denied access to trust principal even in the case of our needing help to pay for life-preserving medical treatment for my wife or child! And the principal in the trust DID have enough for that; at least, it did before all the legal lollygagging for this and another issue—below. Put simply, money that could’ve helped my family in a life-threatening situation went to a bunch of lawyers sitting at their desks, scratching their asses, finding new ways to prolong billing principal. Strike said: ‘The conflict of interest existed when it was made’–as if that obviated it and was not prima facie reason in and of itself to seek objective opinion from a court!
After the denial by the remainder beneficiaries, Strike had ‘an alternative.’ She said I could have help from principal but have to receive reduced monthly payments (until the “loan” was repaid, I guess). As in my budget above, we’d then have less than $7,500 per year for food and unexpected expenses. (Again, we don’t have a car, a major safety concern as we live in the country with the world’s deadliest roads for motorcycle users; every time we go out, we are in danger of being hit and hurt or maybe killed. Official news articles as well as horrific videos on YouTube verify the truth of this empirical fact.)
About this same time, Matt and I learned of some questionable financial transactions in my father’s last weeks. He was diagnosed with fourth stage pancreatic cancer (Nov. 2012) and given four weeks to four months. He lived two months, part in a recuperative hospital, part in hospice. The second financial action, while in hospice and on morphine and Haldol, was supposedly signing a blank check. According to the deposition of the wife of my father’s second cousin, she handed my father his checkbook (from her purse, where she was ‘taking care of it’) on 12/28/12, and he signed a check; she admitted she’d not thought to find a witness. The hospice doctor had seen my father a couple days before and said on that day my father was incapable of executing a financial transaction and very likely was not capable two days later: ‘he was in a state of decline; they usually don’t improve.’ (I believe my very naïve father signed some blank checks earlier. There was also a check two days before he died—even less likely to be able to sign then!) The blank check allegedly signed on 12/28/12 was then taken to the bank, where it was filled in by my father’s second cousin to himself for $90K. (I learned of this in 2015. When did CFT learn about that big check?)
The earlier financial action was 16 days before. On 12/12/12, my father was signed out of the recuperative hospital and was driven to his bank branch by his second cousin. At the bank on 12/12/12, my name was removed from the account the $90K check was from, the account my father had purposely driven me to the same bank branch two and a half years earlier to add me as joint tenant with rights of survivorship. After the ‘errand’ on 12/12/12, according to depositions, my father’s cousin stopped to get him a milkshake (he wasn’t eating much at this point) before returning him to the hospital; at the bank, my father didn’t even get out of the truck because he was still in his hospital pajamas.
I have several reasons to believe my father did not have capacity to carry out either of these financial acts. First, on 12/12/12, he’d spent five weeks in a hospital after surgery revealed cancer and had been on Ambien since he was admitted. The other reasons require more detailed explanation…
After going to the bank, my father’s cousin stopped to get my father a milkshake. Why wasn’t there time to stop at a Western Union (in the same block as the bank), as my father had done many times before, to send some emergency money to help his own flesh and blood. It’s a complex story I’m willing to tell as needed, but most importantly: a few days before, I had an ER visit for life-threatening asthma to pay for out of pocket; I’d also learned my language institute job in Asia would be on hiatus until after the first of the year (my first day back at work was the day he died); my next paycheck was six weeks away.
In Asia, I am 12 hours ahead of EST. I emailed my father first. I called and got no answer. I called the house of his cousins on whose property he was living in his travel trailer. His cousin’s wife told me he was very ill but wouldn’t say what. Then, on 12/11/12, I called my father, and we had what would be our last conversation (two minutes). I told him I was in dire straits: no money for rent, medicine, or food. He said: “I can’t do anything for you” then said he had cancer. I told him I could charge a plane ticket and fly back in a couple weeks when my asthma was okay for a transoceanic flight. “It’s not time to come back now.” I either mentioned again my perilous predicament or wondered aloud “What am I going to do!?” (I didn’t have my own checking account in the US and no money to pay the credit card but figured I could pay with the account he added me to two years before.) “Let me die in peace,” he said. My last words to him, with my asthma as bad as it was: “I might make it to the Pearly Gates before you.” I hung up. (I now have his cell phone with call record intact. The phone was apparently switched off starting a couple days after 12/12/12. In fact, I remember I tried calling again and getting a ‘customer not available’ answer.)
I learned from depositions of his cousin and cousin’s wife that, after our call, my father closed his flip-phone, jammed it in a cup of ice, and said I’d threatened to kill myself for not getting money. I learned from medical records he’d been on nightly doses of Ambien, with side-effects including forgetfulness and aggression. Jamming a phone in a cup of ice after realizing you’re not perfect after all? No, I did not expect him to leave his deathbed and go to Western Union. I did think perhaps he could get someone to go for him; after all, his own flesh-and-blood needed money for FOOD! Nor did I expect the very next day after the call he would be signed out of the hospital and driven to the bank by his second cousin who eventually took $90K from the account my name was removed from the day after my call.
To my not-legally-trained mind, the purpose of the phone call, the aggressive (Ambien-caused?) display of jamming the phone in a cup of ice, and not doing anything the next day while out at the bank to send something when his own flesh-and-blood were in such need should all raise questions about my father’s capacity to understand things that day and the day before. (Indeed, the hospital release form signed by the cousin said ‘nearest relative must sign if resident is physically or mentally incompetent.’) I also noted in the depositions several lies my father was telling about me, about my work, and about his money in his last weeks, lies which bear close examination for what they tell about his state of mind. However, my reasons for doubting my own father’s capacity were countered by testimony of a bank teller, who knew my father only through ten-minute visits to her branch twice a month for just three years, and a hospital doctor… As I was editing this, I learned the doctor whose word is taken as fact regarding his capacity on 12/12/12 is not the same doctor in the same hospital but a different doctor in a different hospital in a different city in a different state, a doctor who didn’t meet my father until five days after, when he was transferred to that hospice. Meanwhile, the knowledge of a highly educated man who has known his father 56 years (counting six after his death because I’ve done a lot of discovery about our lives in that time and learned something significant—below) was never asked for!
Another reason I’m convinced my father lacked capacity is his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It wasn’t diagnosed in his life, but after his death, I spent several years in intense study of NPD. My claim is no empty one as often happens when someone is labelled “narcissist.” I won’t rehash it all here; I can show with multiple examples throughout most of his life how NPD pervasively affected his thoughts, his actions, and his intentions in a 25 single-spaced pages narrative, categorizing these according to observable traits and behaviors of NPD. (By contrast, his second cousins likely couldn’t write 25 sentences about him.)
If you say someone you know is an alcoholic, an anorexic, or a compulsive liar, it’s unlikely anyone will challenge your ‘diagnosis’ if you’ve had a lot of time to observe the person you commented on. Why is it only psychology or psychiatry PhDs can say whether someone very likely has NPD? In fact, Sam Vaknin says some narcissists are so good at their 24/7 act that they fool even professionals. Isn’t it possible some people have carefully studied the criteria, observed a parent, for example, for 50 years (vs. 50 hours in a shrink’s office), and can match the general, abstract things psychology says with specific, concrete examples spanning almost 80 years? An example of my father’s grandiosity before he even met my mother: his explanation of why the army sent him to Germany instead of Korea was Truman attended a church where my father sang in the choir on Sunday mornings while on a day pass from boot camp nearby in Virginia. In truth, Dad joined the Army in 1949 a year before the Korean War began. This and the silliness of a busy man like Harry Truman singling out a young man from Georgia to go with the US occupation forces in Germany post-WW II show how my father’s reality was grandiose even in his 20s.
Unfortunately, the term “narcissist” is carelessly thrown around by people who haven’t done any research on NPD. More unfortunate is a devastating effect which goes unheard of by people who don’t know much about the disorder: Narcissistic Abuse is the general, catch-all expression, but it encompasses financial/economic abuse and psychological/emotional abuse. The devastation from these can be so great it leads to what is aptly called ‘psychological murder’ –not my term, one coined by others who have also experienced abuse by a malignant narcissist. It is acknowledged that alcoholism affects more than the drinker. The same is true of malignant narcissism. A narcissist finds ways to enlist others (family, friends, the legal system, even commercial trusts) to aid and abet in continuing abusive control over the victim; NPD expert Sam Vaknin calls this ‘abuse by proxy.’ Don’t take this lightly: people with NPD are cruel, malevolent, pernicious; they want to see their scapegoats DESTROYED, even their flesh and blood.
It is with this understanding of what my late father has done my whole life and what other people have been subjected to that I’ve been able to fit together two separate realms of knowledge and discover a connection between them that is significant for millions of victims of malignant narcissist spouses or parents: NPD causes someone to have “poisoned affections” and a “perverted sense of right.” The source of those phrases is the 1870 decision Banks v. Goodfellow, in which testamentary capacity and incapacity are described. I have a blog comparing the general, abstract observable presenting behaviors and traits of NPD as delineated by experts with specific, concrete words and actions of my late father (covering most of his 81 years) with words and phrases in the 1870 Banks v. Goodfellow decision. The results are eerily prescient of 21st-century psychology’s understanding of NPD. Have a look at my blog…
http://npdandtestamentarycapacity.blogspot.com/2018/05/narcissistic-personality-disorder-and.html
In late 2016, with a choice between filing a lawsuit against my father’s cousins or facing a lawsuit from me for breach of fiduciary duty (with help of my first attorney), CFT filed suit focusing on the 12/28/12 $90K check; the trust’s interest was the misdirected monies should go into principal. I joined as intervenor-plaintiff with the 12/12/12 name change as my focus; if removal of my name as joint tenant with rights of survivorship was inappropriate, money which should have been remaining in that account should be mine.
In over a year of discovery, there were depositions of one doctor, a bank employee, and my father’s second cousins, but never questions for me about my own father. I recently came across a blog discussing defense strategies during settlement negotiations or mediation. The second most important factor, it said, is hear what the plaintiff has to say. Not even the lies my father told were looked at.
I can give facts to show how and why these were lies. I can also point out his motivations (plural!) for each. It’s not hard to imagine lies so firmly believed by a liar counting as delusions. (We see it on TV every day. What do you think when DT calls other people liar?). When the lies/delusions deal specifically with financial actions in question, the issue of my father’s capacity at that time cannot be easily dismissed. If the other people in this story could not even detect the lies (even today they seem to take my father’s lies as factual foundation for their understanding of everything related to the case), they could not see his motivations either. However, I was never allowed to point these out and describe how I think they bring into question his state of mind in his last weeks. I was threatened with dismissal from the lawsuit because I feared what I know would never see light of day and took it upon myself to point out to the defendant these issues, which I believe vital to uncovering the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Moreover, these lies should have been considered by everyone involved before a final settlement which will have long-lasting, major effects on my family. We have suffered the loss of $90K, denial of the medical crisis amendment, and tens of thousands in legal expenses both to me and to the principal of a trust that I am sole beneficiary of until I die; all of this has put my family perilously close to destitution…
Settlement negotiations: In 2018, a new version of the medical amendment would allow me to receive up to $6,000 reimbursement annually for medical expenses. The author of this idea was apparently clueless how much cheaper medical care is outside the US though there are things in Asia even my pocket couldn’t afford. This likely would not be an issue if $90K hadn’t disappeared ten days before my father died, and tens of thousands were subsequently wasted on lollygagging lawyers. There was also the requirement of notarized affidavits that I seek reimbursement for medical expenses only. Affidavits would cost $50 every time, which adds up to $300 or more a year. Add the cost of FedExing papers half-way around the world, and that $7,500 for food and daily needs would be reduced considerably. Don’t these people think?
My second attorney, Erin Jackson of Waycross, never answered my repeated queries about why I was having a false dilemma choice forced on me when I’d repeatedly shared a third alternative; in May, 2019, it became obvious she’d wasted a lot of time and never aggressively advocated my idea as a couple things in her email to me made it clear the others still did not understand my idea: Instead of maxing out $6,000 a year for three years or using $18,000 over more than that, how about a one-time payout of $18,000 when I have a heart attack or stroke if I even get to a hospital in time? I can pay for my usual meds; I even paid for my wife’s carpal tunnel surgery ($850). However, all that doesn’t allow me to save for big things. $18,000 over several years or $18,000 once? I’m more concerned about help for my wife or child; I’m prepared to tell my wife not to call an ambulance for me. Again, all the legal beating around the bush and charging fees to principal for sending letters to people who don’t read their own English language as well as my students of English as a Foreign Language do, all that money for six years would have paid for several medical emergencies IF the intellectually- and ethically-lazy legal professionals had sat up, read closely, and asked questions to check their (mis-)understandings during those six years!
To recap: when my very reasonable, highly ethical request for a medical crisis amendment got turned down and the misdirected $90K popped up on the radar, I saw recouping that as the only option I had to attain some safety and security in my family’s future; besides, taking that $90K had depleted my father’s assets by nearly a quarter. I’d already spent a lot on my first lawyer to lobby for the amendment; I hoped I could get enough back from a lawsuit to equal my expenses with him.
The monetary offer: I was offered $5,000, which means my father’s second cousins still come out $85K ahead, and we come out $40K behind, in addition to the money principal lost on lollygagging lawyers. On January 8, 2019, I learned the defendant died in December, before we could go to mediation or trial. The widow, in her late 60s, lives in a house on several acres on which one of her three grown children lives in another house. She is probably legally protected from being forced to, but she could get a loan against her house to right a very serious moral wrong which will continue despite the legal case drying up. She’ll probably wind up living with one of her grown kids anyway. We never will own a home. In May, 2019, the trust was saying it was going to take the $5,000 (since they were finally, after more than six years, agreeing with my idea for a medical crisis amendment). With the loss to us of $40K trying to get $90K back, we also lost the hope of getting into the safety of a car.
Next, since my father’s second cousins are allegedly unable to repay the full $90K, the trust, using principal, will pay other $85K the cousins could not pay, not to me but to my daughter upon my death. In early 2019, Jackson suggested, in addition to the $85K, that trust principal also pay my daughter $40K to make up for the $40K we lost pursuing the lawsuit. (Yes, the $5,000 is counted twice, part of the original $90K and the $45K.) That idea was rejected. I am sure that none of them would miss $45K as we will.
The 2014 Trust Construction remedied my father’s deleted secondary remainder beneficiary. The new back-up beneficiaries are his “heirs-at-law,” i.e. my daughter, as I have no siblings, he had no siblings, and my mother died before he did. If I outlive the widow, the money remaining goes to my daughter anyway. So, what is the trust going to do about the settlement? Give her a hundred grand or more, take $85K back, hand it to her again, and say: “And here’s the rest if the $90K your grandfather’s second cousins took before he died, from an account your father was joint tenant of with rights of survivorship”? My daughter could end up with more than that although it is an outright outrage that CFT and the defense are basically just playing a pea and shell game. More… Which would an 11-year-old prefer: $85K or more in the future OR half of that if it means the safety of a car for her family now? Fucking ridiculous!
The absurdity is not finished. What would my father say about $85K or more of his hard-earned money coming here after my death when I’m not around to see to how it is spent? I’m still waiting for the trust’s response to my challenge to show me where it was his intent for even $10K to come to people he despised. In fact, CFT and the lawyers are just going on supposition that that would have been okay with him. I have an email from my father to me before I married; he wrote: “This is not about love; it’s about money.” My first cousin (initial trust advisor) offered to travel half-way around the world with him, but my father still refused to come to his own only child’s wedding. (This was actually narcissistic discard.) I also have an email from my father’s first cousin, who wrote me: “His saying you wouldn’t like what he thinks should happen to your child tells me all I need to know. He thinks it should be aborted.”
My wife and child were not mentioned in the trust, primarily because we hadn’t yet met, nor were they mentioned in my father’s 2011 amendment when his granddaughter was almost four. This fact, his above reactions to my Thai family, and the fact he went against my mother’s wishes in giving her things away to others instead of her daughter-in-law or namesake all tell me his ‘affections were poisoned,’ his ‘sense of right had been perverted’ by his life-long, pervasive Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I think he was wrong not to consider his late ‘beloved’ wife’s wishes, but there is a legitimate concern or two…
My wife’s father, a retired policeman, gets a pension of approximately $3,600 per year. My wife’s mother, a psychological terrorist/emotional blackmailer, will get her greedy claws on every bit she can. There is no Social Security in Thailand; the cultural norm is for grown daughters to give money they earn to support their aging parents. That ‘need/demand’ is made worse by the fact that Thais are very stupid about money and don’t save for the future. In 15 years, I’ve regularly seen in the news that 70% of Thai families have no money in the bank, too much debt to pay off, or both. Moreover, much face is gained by sharing a big win such as a lottery or a life-insurance payoff. You can bet the bank $85K or more will be gone in weeks to people even I have never met, people who will come around when they smell money.
In 14 years with my wife, I’ve held to my rule: “My money takes care of us; your money takes care of your family.” (Her last little coffee kiosk generated only $100 profit per month.) It’s been tough for our marriage; I’m certain there are times money I give her to pay telephone time, gas for the motorcycle, a trip home to see her parents, etc. ends up in her mother’s hands. My wife would not be able to withstand her mother’s demands for big money she and our daughter get after I die though it should all be for them. Dad would be pissed. He’s probably scratching and clawing his way out of his grave this very minute.
Instead of the in-laws receiving over 400 times in one shot what my wife’s father’s retirement is in one month, a better idea is to have a paid-off car, which my wife has to pay only gas and insurance for; to do that, my wife should have a means of supporting herself, our child, and her parents after I’m gone.
In early May, 2019, Erin Jackson informed me Community First Trust wanted to wrap up the lawsuit “in two weeks.” I’d been pushing for action FOR SIX YEARS, but now, without much warning, the trust wanted to end things so quickly that it didn’t seem they gave a damn about doing the right thing for my family. I emailed her May 28 because I thought two weeks about up. The next day, she’d sent me two emails, one after calling the CFT lawyer in Georgia. It turns out he sent the papers two weeks before, and she hadn’t bothered to check her spam folder for something as important as a looming deadline to wrap up a lawsuit.
It was clear from her earlier May email that Jackson had not aggressively advocated for my more practical, workable version of a medical crisis amendment; it’s also likely she’s never explained to other parties how great the harm has been to my family due to the illiteracy of my father’s second cousins and lawyers working for the trust. I had to send Jackson an email re-re-re-requesting the cousins’ financial records she’d told me she had part of five months before and would send when she had complete records for the account set up with that $90K check. Did all of them in Georgia think I’d just accept their word there were only $5,000 left? Again, in four years, my father’s cousins went through money I would have had to manage for 20. In the bank records, when I finally got them, I learned they wasted a hell of a lot on bank fees, so they were stupid in that regard as well as not keeping any for the future. They also had not used any the first year, as if they knew they might get caught, but CFT did nothing to act on something that depleted my father’s assets by a quarter. I wonder what the widow would say if money she thought should go to take care of her grandchildren went to someone else not even in her immediate family.
At the end of May, I finally got the settlement agreement drafted by Vince Settle (Waycross). The trust and trust advisor/widow of the defendant finally agreed I can have help for a future medical crisis ($18K), but then the trust wanted the $5,000 remaining of the $90K the defendant took from an account I was Joint Tenant with Rights of Survivorship on. That would make the loss to my family over $45K, money I needed to recoup to get my family into the safety of a car in the country with the world’s deadliest roads for motorcycle users; i.e., my family continues and will continue to be in physical danger every day.
There was a new caveat: the trust (which was meant to be a source of income for me for life, i.e., for 20 years) might experience a “shortfall” and not be viable until I die. I.e., my only financial means, since I have no retirement from anywhere and will not get Social Security, might not have enough money for that goal of a small monthly stipend until I die. WHY?
First, my late father’s greedy, ignorant, lying, hypocritical second cousins, who’d had pretty much no contact with him until after my mother died, TOOK $90,000, nearly a quarter of his assets, ten days before he died. Second, these same people DENIED a common-sense, morally-imperative amendment for help with a life-or-death medical crisis for me, my wife, our daughter. Third, these same people, with the help of a two-bit defense lawyer, used the law to avoid facing up to the harm on top of harm on top of harm they’d done my family. A statute of limitations kept the widow from being added as a co-defendant though depositions reveal hers were part of the chain of hands the check went through 12/28/12. When her husband died, the legal wrong dried up, but the moral wrongs and harms to my family will never end.
Fourth, my family’s financial and physical futures are in jeopardy because of incompetent lawyers and non-lawyers working for Community First Trust in Arkansas. For six years, their intellectual and moral laziness has cost tens of thousands of dollars of my father’s money, money we needed just to survive. CFT could have exercised some epistemological humility and learned what they didn’t know about my request for a medical crisis amendment. They could have learned about something growing in significance in their industry, the impact of NPD on testamentary capacity, as knowledge of its abusive effects spreads every day on the internet. If a fraction of the nearly 59 million hits a search for “narcissistic abuse” have any substance, that’s still a lot of voices to learn from about something they have not considered before now, something their ignorance will only make worse, something morally imperative to learn about. “I didn’t know that; I need to learn” is not just an intellectual statement; it’s a morally necessary one too.
+++++++++
In recently reading “The Changing Role of Trustee & Trustee Liability: Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Swan?” (March 10, 2009) by Kathryn H. Smith, I came across a few interesting points pertaining to my story.
“Trustee Duties: A Trustee Must Seek Clarification of Ambiguous or Uncertain Trust Terms” CFT did not react to my father deleting and leaving blank the secondary remainder beneficiary if I outlive his second cousins. His 2011 letter/amendment, accepted as an official document, was dated over a year and a half before his death. The trustee and her gal pal outside attorney, both in Little Rock, did not go to court until a year and a half after his death. If asked, I doubt CFT can produce a letter from them to my father before he died to seek clarification of his intent in deleting and leaving blank his back-up remainder beneficiary.
“Trustee Duties: Relevant Factors, Uniform Prudent Investor Act §2(c). …other resources of the beneficiaries.” I started explaining early on after my father’s death that the trust is all I have to rely on in the future: no retirement/pension from anywhere, no Social Security, no Medicare/Medicaid.
“THE DANGEROUS DUTIES… Restatement (Third) of Trusts—Trustees have the duty, ‘within a reasonable time after the creation of the trust, to review the contents of the trust estate and to implement decisions concerning the retention and disposition of original investments in order to conform to the requirements of §§227 and 228’” (emphasis mine). To me, the trust was firmly established with my father’s 2011 letter/amendment, in which he deleted Bank of America as a concurrent trust and nominated Community First Trust as his only trust. From that point on, there should have been a compulsory need, especially in his last weeks, to monitor assets, which means they should have noticed that $90,000 transfer after his prognosis and ten days before he died. When did CFT get his banks statements? How often do you see a check not only for $90,000, but also depleting assets by nearly a quarter for an income for life trust?
“Uniform Principal and Income Act. Fairness to Beneficiaries. When making such an adjustment the trustee is required to consider the same factors set forth under Sec. 2 (c) of the UPIA for investing and managing trust assets. Some of these factors are: the nature, purpose, and expected duration of the trust; the intent of the settlor, the identity and circumstances of the beneficiaries; the needs for liquidity, regularity of income and preservation and appreciation of capital; and the anticipated tax consequences of an adjustment.” Circumstances of the beneficiaries makes me think about my request for a one-time disbursement for a life-or-death medical crisis and the demonstrable reasons for it. Decanting?
“PROCEDURAL PRUDENCE Need for Defined Procedures to Determine and Review Construction of Ambiguous Terms. Court action may be appropriate when the document provides direction to the trustee that seems at odds with the grantor’s intent. If the grantor is living, a simple trust amendment may clarify intentions or resolve inconsistencies.” Clause 7.01a in my father’s trust: “No further payments out of principal to RTN.” This is exactly where it broke down and should have been clarified between 2005 with the initial drafting of the trust and before his terminal prognosis in 2012; cash assets ran out and the trust had to go to court to do a construction (instead of contacting him for an amendment while he was still alive). Moreover, the potentially fatal consequences to me (with my severe asthma) of not having included a medical crisis clause in the original instrument seemed to carry some conflict (see next point). There was also the conflict of interest of the trust advisors/remainder beneficiaries and the mistake of the trust’s seeking THEIR input instead of an independent court’s, regarding the conflict of interest on the medical crisis amendment.
“PROCEDURAL PRUDENCE Investigation of Risk Tolerance and Financial Needs of Beneficiaries. Fiduciary liability was also found in Scheidmantel, where the trustee did not investigate the circumstances of the income beneficiary when he was in critical condition in a hospital. The trustee should be aware of those factual circumstances by making inquiry with reasonable frequency and at reasonable intervals concerning the needs of the beneficiaries.”
On the Conclusions page…
“Gain an understanding of the ‘soft side’ of trust administration. A fiduciary should have sufficient facts about the grantor and beneficiaries. A family tree is a helpful tool to identify parties and relationships. Beneficiaries who are minors or who are under other legal disabilities should be identified. It is important to gain an understanding of family (and non-traditional family) relationships, financial resources and needs.” I, for one, first learned of Bowen Family Systems Theory in 1986; it made and still does make a lot of sense. I doubt any of the legal and trust professionals have ever heard of something they should have studied in their so-called graduate-level educations.
“Look at the whole picture. … Particular circumstances such as the age or economic condition of one or more of the beneficiaries, the length of the trust term, specific provisions in the trust agreement or the relationship of the assets to the grantor or the beneficiaries can permit a deviation from the duty to diversify.” As above.
“Document and communicate rationale behind decisions. The trustee should create a record of the basis for decisions. Communicate with the beneficiaries—information should be both incoming and outgoing.” / “If a beneficiary requests a certain action or complains about an action, take steps to remedy the problem.” / “Touch base with the beneficiaries. … Regular communication with beneficiaries can prevent many disagreements between beneficiaries and trustees.” CFT did none of this, and my family is suffering as a result.
Caused My Family to End Up in Unending Financial and Physical DANGER
What happens when educated people—lawyers, in particular—don’t listen carefully or ask questions to check their own (mis-)understanding of something? Can great harm result due to ‘educated professionals’ thinking they’re so damned smart and/or moral about something when they’re not?
“Communicate with the beneficiaries—information should be both incoming and outgoing… Regular communication with beneficiaries can prevent many disagreements between beneficiaries and trustees.” from “The Changing Role of Trustee & Trustee Liability: Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Swan?” (March 10, 2009) by Kathryn H. Smith.
A trust that should have lasted me over 20 years is on the verge of becoming insolvent after six, leaving my family’s safety, security, and survival in peril. Before, I worried about having enough myself to pay for a life-threatening medical crisis; now, I worry about just having enough for food and shelter in the future.
After my mother died (2003), my father told me, their only child, he “should have almost half-a-million dollars for (me)” when he died. I figured that was a slight exaggeration. When he died in 2013, the $400K+ he did have/put in a trust would have been enough to taken care of my family for 20 years or more, but…
In just six years, that $400K has been reduced to the point that the trust is warning there might not be enough to pay my monthly stipend until I die. I’m 55 and won’t get a retirement from any higher ed job I had in the last 30 years in the US and abroad, nor will I get Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
What happened to all the money? Ten days before my father died, his second cousins took $90K from him (more, if you count their using his credit card at gas stations and grocery stores his last weeks). Before he even died, a quarter of my father’s finances had gone to people who’d had no relationship with him in the past 60 years.
Before I learned of that (2015) and shortly after my father’s death (early 2013), I started asking the trust about an amendment for help with a major medical crisis in my or my family’s future. My financial worth before my father died, six months before I turned 50, was ZERO. I knew I won’t have enough for a heart attack or stroke, which costs less in Thailand than in the US but still more than I’m able to save because, for 30 years, I’ve usually had to pay for my uninsured asthma medications, clinic and ER visits, and hospital stays out of pocket. (This and my annual average income of $6,666 during my 30 years in higher ed are why my financial future is totally dependent on the trust.)
For six years, I tried to engage Community First Trust in Arkansas in a dialogue about my family’s need for a medical crisis amendment. (I still have all the emails.) When my repeated attempts were met by trustee rudeness, I got my own lawyer in Little Rock. After my attorney and I started digging, we learned of the $90K misdirected before my father died. (Bank records show his second cousins did nothing with the money during the first year—as if they knew they might have to return it, but CFT did not pursue the questionable transfer until my lawyer threatened them with a lawsuit in 2016 for failure of fiduciary duty.)
The legal costs to me to try and get some action regarding the medical amendment and misdirected $90K have been over $45K (of the $400K my father had). The legal costs to trust principal (my father’s money) have been that much or more, enough that two or three medical crises would where I live would have been covered. All of this began with CFT’s incompetent dealing with my request for a medical crisis amendment and trying to get back that $90K, which should have been in an account my father had added me to as Joint Tenant with Rights of Survivorship in 2010, two and a half years before he died. (He was checked out of the hospital and driven by the defendant to the bank where my name was removed from the account. Dad didn’t leave the truck; he was in hospital pajamas and returned to his deathbed after.)
The $90K the defendants took from my dying father is gone. (Six years later, they have only $5,000 left of the $90,000; money that I would have had to manage for over 20 years, they went through in four.) Tens of thousands in fees (from my father’s assets/principal) to pay lawyers whose communicative skills merit an F are gone. The $45K that I invested trying to get a morally imperative medical crisis amendment to the trust and, after that was denied, trying to recoup $90K that should have come to me is gone. With it, my family’s hope of getting into the safety of a car in a country with the world’s deadliest roads for motorcycle users is gone. (Google “Thailand motorcycle deaths”; you’ll see news stories and shocking videos. If something happens to my wife and child, CFT and my late father’s cousins will be to blame.)
Psychological murder is an end result of narcissistic abuse, which includes financial abuse to the point of ruination. At the core of all of these issues is my late father’s malignant narcissism; making this an even uglier and horrific ordeal is the intractability of lawyers and people at the trust who seem to have no interest in learning something new about the world, knowledge of which learned now could only improve how to address future similar cases and reduce the resultant suffering instead of increasing it. Not one time in six years, however, has anyone working for the trust come back to me with: “These issues seem very important to you. Life or death important. Let’s make sure we understand what you’re asking; then we can go from there.” What I got instead was “You might not like our decisions, but you have to live with them.” (I still have the email.) This is just part of how Community First Trust is complicit in psychological murder and the potential financial ruin of my family despite there having been enough money for over 20 years.) Here are two links describing how psychological murder happens: https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Psychological-Murder and https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/11/11-devastating-signs-youve-been-abused-by-a-malignant-narcissist/ I am the victim of the psychological murder. My own late malignant narcissist father was the perpetrator. Community First Trust and its gang of intellectually-, morally-lazy lawyers are the aiders and abettors. I turned 56 on July 4, most likely my last birthday.
I hope my story interests you. I believe your readers would be outraged by and should want to learn about problems with the trust industry and trust law before they ‘trust a trust’ to take care of their family after they are gone. If you want to learn more of this story, I have a ten-page narrative already written up in MS Word. I will also turn over my Gmail password for verification of all of the correspondence with Community First Trust. My Skype ID is tnixon_ma (there are two of these in search results for that; try both of them as I use only one). I am 11 hours ahead of the East Coast but can arrange for an online interview with 24 hours advance notice. Contact me first and learn all of the story before you contact any of the other players in this horrifying farce.
“I didn’t know that; I need to learn about it” isn’t just an intellectual statement; it’s also a very moral one.
The Cast of Characters
Arkansas (state where the trust is located)
Bill Kerst, CEO/President
Community First Trust
135 Section Line Rd #C1
Hot Springs, Arkansas 71913
(501) 520-3660
Amy Wren, JD/CPA, former trust officer, CFT
Wren Law Firm (or Bank of Ozarks VP?)
11300 Executive Center Dr, Suite A
Little Rock, Arkansas 72211
(501) 223-0025
Jane Strike, JD, former outside attorney in AR for CFT
Now practicing in Malvern, Arkansas. Wife of Pastor Tom Strike
Third Baptist Church
817 W. Young St.
Malvern, Arkansas 72104
(501) 337-7004
Georgia (state where lawsuit is being pursued)
Erin Conner-Jackson, JD, my second attorney, an absolute failure at communicating
Conner and Jackson, PC
1008 Plant Ave.
Waycross, Georgia 31501
(912) 283-4394
Vince Settle, JD, attorney in Georgia for CFT
Thomas & Settle
800 Plant Ave
Waycross, Georgia 31501
(912) 283-0026
I also have the names and contact information for the defendant’s widow and the defendant’s lawyer.
The story in detail…
I had a financially very unrewarding career as a part-time college instructor in the US until I moved abroad 16 years ago. Even then, I ended up living hand-to-mouth. My last jobs three college jobs in the US paid less—less again, and less yet again—than I’d earned as a teaching assistant 15 years before in grad school. In 30 years, I had two in which I earned $25K; the other 25+ years, I earned $12K OR LESS. My total career earnings over nearly 30 years averaged $6,666 per year.
I developed asthma in grad school. I’ve usually had to pay my daily meds, doctor/ER visits, and hospital stays out of pocket. Before my father died, he had to help sometimes. In 1991, I had much needed surgery, which cost him $10K. In 2003, I moved to Asia, where asthma meds cost 10% of what they do in America, and clinic/ER visits are affordable out of pocket. In 2007, I spent a week in an ICU, knocked out and on a respirator because I couldn’t breathe on my own; I didn’t have the $2,000 for the hospital bill, so my father told me to put it on my credit card, and he paid it in the US.
My unending medical expenses combined with meager pay for 30 years made my attempts to build and keep savings a one-step-forward, two-steps-back ordeal. My annual budget (with a $1,500 per month trust stipend) for a family of three: $18K a year from the trust: minus $2,000 a year for school for my child, minus $6,000 a year for rent/utilities, minus $2,500 for my daily asthma meds (NOT including ER or hospital stays). That leaves $7,500 a year for food, daily expenses, and unexpected needs.
“Failure to communicate.” A month after my father died (January, 2013), I started trying to explain to Community First Trust (CFT) trust officer Amy Wren and later Jane Strike, outside attorney hired because she was licensed in the state where my father died, my need for a medical crisis amendment to the trust. Both women were repeatedly dismissive of my entreaties for help in a life-or-death situation; for over a year, I explained the facts above. These two women indeed went to court in 2014 for a Trust Construction for two other reasons, but they never once asked questions of me to check their understanding of what I was asking for. For another year after that, I continued trying to engage them in a dialogue about this issue. I researched trust law and learned trusts can indeed be modified. In June, 2015, I let Wren and Strike know how frustrated I was with their assumptions about me, my father, and the vitally important thing I was asking for. Wren replied: “You might not like our decisions, but you have to live with them.” (I still have the email.) A life-or-death matter for me, my wife, and our child? No, I don’t like their decisions. No, I don’t have to live with them. And, no, we don’t have to die because of them!
I found and retained an attorney in Little Rock. I think the trustee’s snarky reply to me as well as the just cause of my repeated and repeatedly denied requests caught Matt House’s attention. Sadly, even with Matt’s help, the trust’s tag team lawyers hemmed and hawed. Strike, doing her best impersonation of a self-appointed Supreme Court Justice, gave the excuse: “There’s nothing in the trust paperwork that justifies seeking a court’s opinion.” After two more months, she said it was possible to ask the trust advisors (Why not the first time we asked? A way for her to bill more ‘work’?), people chosen by my father before he died: his second cousins (my father and I were only children; my mother died before he did).
Another thing about the trust advisors, people who have say-so whether and how the trust can be modified: they are also remainder beneficiaries; i.e., if I predecease them, they get the remainder of the money; i.e., if I die because I can’t afford and seek help for a life-threatening medical crisis, they get the money. Conflict of interest? Yes. Matt and I pointed it out before Wren and Strike sent the amendment to people who likely could not understand what they read (was probably poorly written by trust lawyers to begin with). Guess what! The trust advisors/remainder beneficiaries turned it down: they denied access to trust principal even in the case of our needing help to pay for life-preserving medical treatment for my wife or child! And the principal in the trust DID have enough for that; at least, it did before all the legal lollygagging for this and another issue—below. Put simply, money that could’ve helped my family in a life-threatening situation went to a bunch of lawyers sitting at their desks, scratching their asses, finding new ways to prolong billing principal. Strike said: ‘The conflict of interest existed when it was made’–as if that obviated it and was not prima facie reason in and of itself to seek objective opinion from a court!
After the denial by the remainder beneficiaries, Strike had ‘an alternative.’ She said I could have help from principal but have to receive reduced monthly payments (until the “loan” was repaid, I guess). As in my budget above, we’d then have less than $7,500 per year for food and unexpected expenses. (Again, we don’t have a car, a major safety concern as we live in the country with the world’s deadliest roads for motorcycle users; every time we go out, we are in danger of being hit and hurt or maybe killed. Official news articles as well as horrific videos on YouTube verify the truth of this empirical fact.)
About this same time, Matt and I learned of some questionable financial transactions in my father’s last weeks. He was diagnosed with fourth stage pancreatic cancer (Nov. 2012) and given four weeks to four months. He lived two months, part in a recuperative hospital, part in hospice. The second financial action, while in hospice and on morphine and Haldol, was supposedly signing a blank check. According to the deposition of the wife of my father’s second cousin, she handed my father his checkbook (from her purse, where she was ‘taking care of it’) on 12/28/12, and he signed a check; she admitted she’d not thought to find a witness. The hospice doctor had seen my father a couple days before and said on that day my father was incapable of executing a financial transaction and very likely was not capable two days later: ‘he was in a state of decline; they usually don’t improve.’ (I believe my very naïve father signed some blank checks earlier. There was also a check two days before he died—even less likely to be able to sign then!) The blank check allegedly signed on 12/28/12 was then taken to the bank, where it was filled in by my father’s second cousin to himself for $90K. (I learned of this in 2015. When did CFT learn about that big check?)
The earlier financial action was 16 days before. On 12/12/12, my father was signed out of the recuperative hospital and was driven to his bank branch by his second cousin. At the bank on 12/12/12, my name was removed from the account the $90K check was from, the account my father had purposely driven me to the same bank branch two and a half years earlier to add me as joint tenant with rights of survivorship. After the ‘errand’ on 12/12/12, according to depositions, my father’s cousin stopped to get him a milkshake (he wasn’t eating much at this point) before returning him to the hospital; at the bank, my father didn’t even get out of the truck because he was still in his hospital pajamas.
I have several reasons to believe my father did not have capacity to carry out either of these financial acts. First, on 12/12/12, he’d spent five weeks in a hospital after surgery revealed cancer and had been on Ambien since he was admitted. The other reasons require more detailed explanation…
After going to the bank, my father’s cousin stopped to get my father a milkshake. Why wasn’t there time to stop at a Western Union (in the same block as the bank), as my father had done many times before, to send some emergency money to help his own flesh and blood. It’s a complex story I’m willing to tell as needed, but most importantly: a few days before, I had an ER visit for life-threatening asthma to pay for out of pocket; I’d also learned my language institute job in Asia would be on hiatus until after the first of the year (my first day back at work was the day he died); my next paycheck was six weeks away.
In Asia, I am 12 hours ahead of EST. I emailed my father first. I called and got no answer. I called the house of his cousins on whose property he was living in his travel trailer. His cousin’s wife told me he was very ill but wouldn’t say what. Then, on 12/11/12, I called my father, and we had what would be our last conversation (two minutes). I told him I was in dire straits: no money for rent, medicine, or food. He said: “I can’t do anything for you” then said he had cancer. I told him I could charge a plane ticket and fly back in a couple weeks when my asthma was okay for a transoceanic flight. “It’s not time to come back now.” I either mentioned again my perilous predicament or wondered aloud “What am I going to do!?” (I didn’t have my own checking account in the US and no money to pay the credit card but figured I could pay with the account he added me to two years before.) “Let me die in peace,” he said. My last words to him, with my asthma as bad as it was: “I might make it to the Pearly Gates before you.” I hung up. (I now have his cell phone with call record intact. The phone was apparently switched off starting a couple days after 12/12/12. In fact, I remember I tried calling again and getting a ‘customer not available’ answer.)
I learned from depositions of his cousin and cousin’s wife that, after our call, my father closed his flip-phone, jammed it in a cup of ice, and said I’d threatened to kill myself for not getting money. I learned from medical records he’d been on nightly doses of Ambien, with side-effects including forgetfulness and aggression. Jamming a phone in a cup of ice after realizing you’re not perfect after all? No, I did not expect him to leave his deathbed and go to Western Union. I did think perhaps he could get someone to go for him; after all, his own flesh-and-blood needed money for FOOD! Nor did I expect the very next day after the call he would be signed out of the hospital and driven to the bank by his second cousin who eventually took $90K from the account my name was removed from the day after my call.
To my not-legally-trained mind, the purpose of the phone call, the aggressive (Ambien-caused?) display of jamming the phone in a cup of ice, and not doing anything the next day while out at the bank to send something when his own flesh-and-blood were in such need should all raise questions about my father’s capacity to understand things that day and the day before. (Indeed, the hospital release form signed by the cousin said ‘nearest relative must sign if resident is physically or mentally incompetent.’) I also noted in the depositions several lies my father was telling about me, about my work, and about his money in his last weeks, lies which bear close examination for what they tell about his state of mind. However, my reasons for doubting my own father’s capacity were countered by testimony of a bank teller, who knew my father only through ten-minute visits to her branch twice a month for just three years, and a hospital doctor… As I was editing this, I learned the doctor whose word is taken as fact regarding his capacity on 12/12/12 is not the same doctor in the same hospital but a different doctor in a different hospital in a different city in a different state, a doctor who didn’t meet my father until five days after, when he was transferred to that hospice. Meanwhile, the knowledge of a highly educated man who has known his father 56 years (counting six after his death because I’ve done a lot of discovery about our lives in that time and learned something significant—below) was never asked for!
Another reason I’m convinced my father lacked capacity is his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It wasn’t diagnosed in his life, but after his death, I spent several years in intense study of NPD. My claim is no empty one as often happens when someone is labelled “narcissist.” I won’t rehash it all here; I can show with multiple examples throughout most of his life how NPD pervasively affected his thoughts, his actions, and his intentions in a 25 single-spaced pages narrative, categorizing these according to observable traits and behaviors of NPD. (By contrast, his second cousins likely couldn’t write 25 sentences about him.)
If you say someone you know is an alcoholic, an anorexic, or a compulsive liar, it’s unlikely anyone will challenge your ‘diagnosis’ if you’ve had a lot of time to observe the person you commented on. Why is it only psychology or psychiatry PhDs can say whether someone very likely has NPD? In fact, Sam Vaknin says some narcissists are so good at their 24/7 act that they fool even professionals. Isn’t it possible some people have carefully studied the criteria, observed a parent, for example, for 50 years (vs. 50 hours in a shrink’s office), and can match the general, abstract things psychology says with specific, concrete examples spanning almost 80 years? An example of my father’s grandiosity before he even met my mother: his explanation of why the army sent him to Germany instead of Korea was Truman attended a church where my father sang in the choir on Sunday mornings while on a day pass from boot camp nearby in Virginia. In truth, Dad joined the Army in 1949 a year before the Korean War began. This and the silliness of a busy man like Harry Truman singling out a young man from Georgia to go with the US occupation forces in Germany post-WW II show how my father’s reality was grandiose even in his 20s.
Unfortunately, the term “narcissist” is carelessly thrown around by people who haven’t done any research on NPD. More unfortunate is a devastating effect which goes unheard of by people who don’t know much about the disorder: Narcissistic Abuse is the general, catch-all expression, but it encompasses financial/economic abuse and psychological/emotional abuse. The devastation from these can be so great it leads to what is aptly called ‘psychological murder’ –not my term, one coined by others who have also experienced abuse by a malignant narcissist. It is acknowledged that alcoholism affects more than the drinker. The same is true of malignant narcissism. A narcissist finds ways to enlist others (family, friends, the legal system, even commercial trusts) to aid and abet in continuing abusive control over the victim; NPD expert Sam Vaknin calls this ‘abuse by proxy.’ Don’t take this lightly: people with NPD are cruel, malevolent, pernicious; they want to see their scapegoats DESTROYED, even their flesh and blood.
It is with this understanding of what my late father has done my whole life and what other people have been subjected to that I’ve been able to fit together two separate realms of knowledge and discover a connection between them that is significant for millions of victims of malignant narcissist spouses or parents: NPD causes someone to have “poisoned affections” and a “perverted sense of right.” The source of those phrases is the 1870 decision Banks v. Goodfellow, in which testamentary capacity and incapacity are described. I have a blog comparing the general, abstract observable presenting behaviors and traits of NPD as delineated by experts with specific, concrete words and actions of my late father (covering most of his 81 years) with words and phrases in the 1870 Banks v. Goodfellow decision. The results are eerily prescient of 21st-century psychology’s understanding of NPD. Have a look at my blog…
http://npdandtestamentarycapacity.blogspot.com/2018/05/narcissistic-personality-disorder-and.html
In late 2016, with a choice between filing a lawsuit against my father’s cousins or facing a lawsuit from me for breach of fiduciary duty (with help of my first attorney), CFT filed suit focusing on the 12/28/12 $90K check; the trust’s interest was the misdirected monies should go into principal. I joined as intervenor-plaintiff with the 12/12/12 name change as my focus; if removal of my name as joint tenant with rights of survivorship was inappropriate, money which should have been remaining in that account should be mine.
In over a year of discovery, there were depositions of one doctor, a bank employee, and my father’s second cousins, but never questions for me about my own father. I recently came across a blog discussing defense strategies during settlement negotiations or mediation. The second most important factor, it said, is hear what the plaintiff has to say. Not even the lies my father told were looked at.
I can give facts to show how and why these were lies. I can also point out his motivations (plural!) for each. It’s not hard to imagine lies so firmly believed by a liar counting as delusions. (We see it on TV every day. What do you think when DT calls other people liar?). When the lies/delusions deal specifically with financial actions in question, the issue of my father’s capacity at that time cannot be easily dismissed. If the other people in this story could not even detect the lies (even today they seem to take my father’s lies as factual foundation for their understanding of everything related to the case), they could not see his motivations either. However, I was never allowed to point these out and describe how I think they bring into question his state of mind in his last weeks. I was threatened with dismissal from the lawsuit because I feared what I know would never see light of day and took it upon myself to point out to the defendant these issues, which I believe vital to uncovering the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Moreover, these lies should have been considered by everyone involved before a final settlement which will have long-lasting, major effects on my family. We have suffered the loss of $90K, denial of the medical crisis amendment, and tens of thousands in legal expenses both to me and to the principal of a trust that I am sole beneficiary of until I die; all of this has put my family perilously close to destitution…
Settlement negotiations: In 2018, a new version of the medical amendment would allow me to receive up to $6,000 reimbursement annually for medical expenses. The author of this idea was apparently clueless how much cheaper medical care is outside the US though there are things in Asia even my pocket couldn’t afford. This likely would not be an issue if $90K hadn’t disappeared ten days before my father died, and tens of thousands were subsequently wasted on lollygagging lawyers. There was also the requirement of notarized affidavits that I seek reimbursement for medical expenses only. Affidavits would cost $50 every time, which adds up to $300 or more a year. Add the cost of FedExing papers half-way around the world, and that $7,500 for food and daily needs would be reduced considerably. Don’t these people think?
My second attorney, Erin Jackson of Waycross, never answered my repeated queries about why I was having a false dilemma choice forced on me when I’d repeatedly shared a third alternative; in May, 2019, it became obvious she’d wasted a lot of time and never aggressively advocated my idea as a couple things in her email to me made it clear the others still did not understand my idea: Instead of maxing out $6,000 a year for three years or using $18,000 over more than that, how about a one-time payout of $18,000 when I have a heart attack or stroke if I even get to a hospital in time? I can pay for my usual meds; I even paid for my wife’s carpal tunnel surgery ($850). However, all that doesn’t allow me to save for big things. $18,000 over several years or $18,000 once? I’m more concerned about help for my wife or child; I’m prepared to tell my wife not to call an ambulance for me. Again, all the legal beating around the bush and charging fees to principal for sending letters to people who don’t read their own English language as well as my students of English as a Foreign Language do, all that money for six years would have paid for several medical emergencies IF the intellectually- and ethically-lazy legal professionals had sat up, read closely, and asked questions to check their (mis-)understandings during those six years!
To recap: when my very reasonable, highly ethical request for a medical crisis amendment got turned down and the misdirected $90K popped up on the radar, I saw recouping that as the only option I had to attain some safety and security in my family’s future; besides, taking that $90K had depleted my father’s assets by nearly a quarter. I’d already spent a lot on my first lawyer to lobby for the amendment; I hoped I could get enough back from a lawsuit to equal my expenses with him.
The monetary offer: I was offered $5,000, which means my father’s second cousins still come out $85K ahead, and we come out $40K behind, in addition to the money principal lost on lollygagging lawyers. On January 8, 2019, I learned the defendant died in December, before we could go to mediation or trial. The widow, in her late 60s, lives in a house on several acres on which one of her three grown children lives in another house. She is probably legally protected from being forced to, but she could get a loan against her house to right a very serious moral wrong which will continue despite the legal case drying up. She’ll probably wind up living with one of her grown kids anyway. We never will own a home. In May, 2019, the trust was saying it was going to take the $5,000 (since they were finally, after more than six years, agreeing with my idea for a medical crisis amendment). With the loss to us of $40K trying to get $90K back, we also lost the hope of getting into the safety of a car.
Next, since my father’s second cousins are allegedly unable to repay the full $90K, the trust, using principal, will pay other $85K the cousins could not pay, not to me but to my daughter upon my death. In early 2019, Jackson suggested, in addition to the $85K, that trust principal also pay my daughter $40K to make up for the $40K we lost pursuing the lawsuit. (Yes, the $5,000 is counted twice, part of the original $90K and the $45K.) That idea was rejected. I am sure that none of them would miss $45K as we will.
The 2014 Trust Construction remedied my father’s deleted secondary remainder beneficiary. The new back-up beneficiaries are his “heirs-at-law,” i.e. my daughter, as I have no siblings, he had no siblings, and my mother died before he did. If I outlive the widow, the money remaining goes to my daughter anyway. So, what is the trust going to do about the settlement? Give her a hundred grand or more, take $85K back, hand it to her again, and say: “And here’s the rest if the $90K your grandfather’s second cousins took before he died, from an account your father was joint tenant of with rights of survivorship”? My daughter could end up with more than that although it is an outright outrage that CFT and the defense are basically just playing a pea and shell game. More… Which would an 11-year-old prefer: $85K or more in the future OR half of that if it means the safety of a car for her family now? Fucking ridiculous!
The absurdity is not finished. What would my father say about $85K or more of his hard-earned money coming here after my death when I’m not around to see to how it is spent? I’m still waiting for the trust’s response to my challenge to show me where it was his intent for even $10K to come to people he despised. In fact, CFT and the lawyers are just going on supposition that that would have been okay with him. I have an email from my father to me before I married; he wrote: “This is not about love; it’s about money.” My first cousin (initial trust advisor) offered to travel half-way around the world with him, but my father still refused to come to his own only child’s wedding. (This was actually narcissistic discard.) I also have an email from my father’s first cousin, who wrote me: “His saying you wouldn’t like what he thinks should happen to your child tells me all I need to know. He thinks it should be aborted.”
My wife and child were not mentioned in the trust, primarily because we hadn’t yet met, nor were they mentioned in my father’s 2011 amendment when his granddaughter was almost four. This fact, his above reactions to my Thai family, and the fact he went against my mother’s wishes in giving her things away to others instead of her daughter-in-law or namesake all tell me his ‘affections were poisoned,’ his ‘sense of right had been perverted’ by his life-long, pervasive Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I think he was wrong not to consider his late ‘beloved’ wife’s wishes, but there is a legitimate concern or two…
My wife’s father, a retired policeman, gets a pension of approximately $3,600 per year. My wife’s mother, a psychological terrorist/emotional blackmailer, will get her greedy claws on every bit she can. There is no Social Security in Thailand; the cultural norm is for grown daughters to give money they earn to support their aging parents. That ‘need/demand’ is made worse by the fact that Thais are very stupid about money and don’t save for the future. In 15 years, I’ve regularly seen in the news that 70% of Thai families have no money in the bank, too much debt to pay off, or both. Moreover, much face is gained by sharing a big win such as a lottery or a life-insurance payoff. You can bet the bank $85K or more will be gone in weeks to people even I have never met, people who will come around when they smell money.
In 14 years with my wife, I’ve held to my rule: “My money takes care of us; your money takes care of your family.” (Her last little coffee kiosk generated only $100 profit per month.) It’s been tough for our marriage; I’m certain there are times money I give her to pay telephone time, gas for the motorcycle, a trip home to see her parents, etc. ends up in her mother’s hands. My wife would not be able to withstand her mother’s demands for big money she and our daughter get after I die though it should all be for them. Dad would be pissed. He’s probably scratching and clawing his way out of his grave this very minute.
Instead of the in-laws receiving over 400 times in one shot what my wife’s father’s retirement is in one month, a better idea is to have a paid-off car, which my wife has to pay only gas and insurance for; to do that, my wife should have a means of supporting herself, our child, and her parents after I’m gone.
In early May, 2019, Erin Jackson informed me Community First Trust wanted to wrap up the lawsuit “in two weeks.” I’d been pushing for action FOR SIX YEARS, but now, without much warning, the trust wanted to end things so quickly that it didn’t seem they gave a damn about doing the right thing for my family. I emailed her May 28 because I thought two weeks about up. The next day, she’d sent me two emails, one after calling the CFT lawyer in Georgia. It turns out he sent the papers two weeks before, and she hadn’t bothered to check her spam folder for something as important as a looming deadline to wrap up a lawsuit.
It was clear from her earlier May email that Jackson had not aggressively advocated for my more practical, workable version of a medical crisis amendment; it’s also likely she’s never explained to other parties how great the harm has been to my family due to the illiteracy of my father’s second cousins and lawyers working for the trust. I had to send Jackson an email re-re-re-requesting the cousins’ financial records she’d told me she had part of five months before and would send when she had complete records for the account set up with that $90K check. Did all of them in Georgia think I’d just accept their word there were only $5,000 left? Again, in four years, my father’s cousins went through money I would have had to manage for 20. In the bank records, when I finally got them, I learned they wasted a hell of a lot on bank fees, so they were stupid in that regard as well as not keeping any for the future. They also had not used any the first year, as if they knew they might get caught, but CFT did nothing to act on something that depleted my father’s assets by a quarter. I wonder what the widow would say if money she thought should go to take care of her grandchildren went to someone else not even in her immediate family.
At the end of May, I finally got the settlement agreement drafted by Vince Settle (Waycross). The trust and trust advisor/widow of the defendant finally agreed I can have help for a future medical crisis ($18K), but then the trust wanted the $5,000 remaining of the $90K the defendant took from an account I was Joint Tenant with Rights of Survivorship on. That would make the loss to my family over $45K, money I needed to recoup to get my family into the safety of a car in the country with the world’s deadliest roads for motorcycle users; i.e., my family continues and will continue to be in physical danger every day.
There was a new caveat: the trust (which was meant to be a source of income for me for life, i.e., for 20 years) might experience a “shortfall” and not be viable until I die. I.e., my only financial means, since I have no retirement from anywhere and will not get Social Security, might not have enough money for that goal of a small monthly stipend until I die. WHY?
First, my late father’s greedy, ignorant, lying, hypocritical second cousins, who’d had pretty much no contact with him until after my mother died, TOOK $90,000, nearly a quarter of his assets, ten days before he died. Second, these same people DENIED a common-sense, morally-imperative amendment for help with a life-or-death medical crisis for me, my wife, our daughter. Third, these same people, with the help of a two-bit defense lawyer, used the law to avoid facing up to the harm on top of harm on top of harm they’d done my family. A statute of limitations kept the widow from being added as a co-defendant though depositions reveal hers were part of the chain of hands the check went through 12/28/12. When her husband died, the legal wrong dried up, but the moral wrongs and harms to my family will never end.
Fourth, my family’s financial and physical futures are in jeopardy because of incompetent lawyers and non-lawyers working for Community First Trust in Arkansas. For six years, their intellectual and moral laziness has cost tens of thousands of dollars of my father’s money, money we needed just to survive. CFT could have exercised some epistemological humility and learned what they didn’t know about my request for a medical crisis amendment. They could have learned about something growing in significance in their industry, the impact of NPD on testamentary capacity, as knowledge of its abusive effects spreads every day on the internet. If a fraction of the nearly 59 million hits a search for “narcissistic abuse” have any substance, that’s still a lot of voices to learn from about something they have not considered before now, something their ignorance will only make worse, something morally imperative to learn about. “I didn’t know that; I need to learn” is not just an intellectual statement; it’s a morally necessary one too.
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In recently reading “The Changing Role of Trustee & Trustee Liability: Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Swan?” (March 10, 2009) by Kathryn H. Smith, I came across a few interesting points pertaining to my story.
“Trustee Duties: A Trustee Must Seek Clarification of Ambiguous or Uncertain Trust Terms” CFT did not react to my father deleting and leaving blank the secondary remainder beneficiary if I outlive his second cousins. His 2011 letter/amendment, accepted as an official document, was dated over a year and a half before his death. The trustee and her gal pal outside attorney, both in Little Rock, did not go to court until a year and a half after his death. If asked, I doubt CFT can produce a letter from them to my father before he died to seek clarification of his intent in deleting and leaving blank his back-up remainder beneficiary.
“Trustee Duties: Relevant Factors, Uniform Prudent Investor Act §2(c). …other resources of the beneficiaries.” I started explaining early on after my father’s death that the trust is all I have to rely on in the future: no retirement/pension from anywhere, no Social Security, no Medicare/Medicaid.
“THE DANGEROUS DUTIES… Restatement (Third) of Trusts—Trustees have the duty, ‘within a reasonable time after the creation of the trust, to review the contents of the trust estate and to implement decisions concerning the retention and disposition of original investments in order to conform to the requirements of §§227 and 228’” (emphasis mine). To me, the trust was firmly established with my father’s 2011 letter/amendment, in which he deleted Bank of America as a concurrent trust and nominated Community First Trust as his only trust. From that point on, there should have been a compulsory need, especially in his last weeks, to monitor assets, which means they should have noticed that $90,000 transfer after his prognosis and ten days before he died. When did CFT get his banks statements? How often do you see a check not only for $90,000, but also depleting assets by nearly a quarter for an income for life trust?
“Uniform Principal and Income Act. Fairness to Beneficiaries. When making such an adjustment the trustee is required to consider the same factors set forth under Sec. 2 (c) of the UPIA for investing and managing trust assets. Some of these factors are: the nature, purpose, and expected duration of the trust; the intent of the settlor, the identity and circumstances of the beneficiaries; the needs for liquidity, regularity of income and preservation and appreciation of capital; and the anticipated tax consequences of an adjustment.” Circumstances of the beneficiaries makes me think about my request for a one-time disbursement for a life-or-death medical crisis and the demonstrable reasons for it. Decanting?
“PROCEDURAL PRUDENCE Need for Defined Procedures to Determine and Review Construction of Ambiguous Terms. Court action may be appropriate when the document provides direction to the trustee that seems at odds with the grantor’s intent. If the grantor is living, a simple trust amendment may clarify intentions or resolve inconsistencies.” Clause 7.01a in my father’s trust: “No further payments out of principal to RTN.” This is exactly where it broke down and should have been clarified between 2005 with the initial drafting of the trust and before his terminal prognosis in 2012; cash assets ran out and the trust had to go to court to do a construction (instead of contacting him for an amendment while he was still alive). Moreover, the potentially fatal consequences to me (with my severe asthma) of not having included a medical crisis clause in the original instrument seemed to carry some conflict (see next point). There was also the conflict of interest of the trust advisors/remainder beneficiaries and the mistake of the trust’s seeking THEIR input instead of an independent court’s, regarding the conflict of interest on the medical crisis amendment.
“PROCEDURAL PRUDENCE Investigation of Risk Tolerance and Financial Needs of Beneficiaries. Fiduciary liability was also found in Scheidmantel, where the trustee did not investigate the circumstances of the income beneficiary when he was in critical condition in a hospital. The trustee should be aware of those factual circumstances by making inquiry with reasonable frequency and at reasonable intervals concerning the needs of the beneficiaries.”
On the Conclusions page…
“Gain an understanding of the ‘soft side’ of trust administration. A fiduciary should have sufficient facts about the grantor and beneficiaries. A family tree is a helpful tool to identify parties and relationships. Beneficiaries who are minors or who are under other legal disabilities should be identified. It is important to gain an understanding of family (and non-traditional family) relationships, financial resources and needs.” I, for one, first learned of Bowen Family Systems Theory in 1986; it made and still does make a lot of sense. I doubt any of the legal and trust professionals have ever heard of something they should have studied in their so-called graduate-level educations.
“Look at the whole picture. … Particular circumstances such as the age or economic condition of one or more of the beneficiaries, the length of the trust term, specific provisions in the trust agreement or the relationship of the assets to the grantor or the beneficiaries can permit a deviation from the duty to diversify.” As above.
“Document and communicate rationale behind decisions. The trustee should create a record of the basis for decisions. Communicate with the beneficiaries—information should be both incoming and outgoing.” / “If a beneficiary requests a certain action or complains about an action, take steps to remedy the problem.” / “Touch base with the beneficiaries. … Regular communication with beneficiaries can prevent many disagreements between beneficiaries and trustees.” CFT did none of this, and my family is suffering as a result.
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