Response to your letter

Easier to add comments below. I'll write separately responding to the earlier letter.

First, an area of agreement. All of this is extremely disturbing to me. It's the one seriously -- very seriously -- dark spot on the new life that Valeria and I have been shaping for ourselves, and I would therefore like to get it over with and resolved as soon as possible. As I have written, I cannot understand why you are bringing any of these things up, and I think it would be very good to make everything clear, and keep nothing hidden or implicit.

Then come the areas of disagreement, which I hope we can iron out quickly and expeditiously so that we can pick up the warm and close relations that we always had, and that I'd always treasured.

More below, interspersed.

Back from Mexico, and there's some business I'd like to take care of.

I would like to arrange for Max to step down as trustee of the marital trusts. All that this requires is that each of you authorize him to do so. I've explained some of the reasons. There are others. In general, I want to make a clean break from what has been happening for the past few years. I would then like to appoint Richard Kahn as Trustee. As you know, he is the financial advisor/accountant I have been working with, extremely competent and trustworthy.

I hope this can be done quickly and expeditiously.

In brief, I've worked hard all my life and have managed to set aside funds to ensure your security and the security of your children -- the two houses, trusts, in substantial sums. Valeria and I are very happy together. I think I now have the right to live the rest of my life in peace and tranquility, without constant financial concerns, in fact like everyone else I know.

Those who remain. You have perhaps heard that my old friend Ed Herman died a few days ago.

Message expresses sadness at the loss of Ed Herman.

I would like to renew my request that you arrange for Max to resign as trustee for the marital trusts, and expeditiously, for reasons I will explain below.

I have already spelled out some of the reasons why I cannot trust Max. I hope you have read those detailed letters, which only tell part of the story, though it was more than enough. By now the situation has become completely intolerable.

During the years when Max was serving as my lawyer, he saw no problem when the IRA that is my source of income was being depleted by distributions to 10 family members -- which alone amounted to half of the mandatory withdrawals -- along with payment of taxes and management fees for the entire estate. All of that exhausted the annual withdrawal, and the IRA was exhausted further by payments for the Wellfleet house, Alex's medical expenses, and others that you know about, compelling me to make further withdrawals just for ordinary daily expenses, and imposing the exorbitant taxes charged for such withdrawals. Max saw no problem with that. He never suggested any financial accounting from any of the beneficiaries. I trusted him, mistakenly, as in the case of the purchase of the apartment and the outlandish loan from the marital trust, which I assumed would be for a few weeks until the Lexington house was sold, not realizing -- though he surely did -- that I would receive nothing for that and would be stuck with an expensive apartment I could not possibly afford and a loan that I never would have agreed to had I understood.

Now, all of a sudden, everything has changed. Suddenly, Max has all sorts of scruples and legalistic demands. What caused the sudden change? It is because now I am requesting that taxes be paid by the marital trust. For the first time, Max insists on extensive (and of course outrageous) financial surveillance, claiming that as trustee, he is concerned with life expectancy (I might live too long) and with the long-term effect on the trust -- matters that never concerned him while he watched my IRA being depleted with payment of taxes and management fees for the entire estate, in addition to distributions to family. No scruples, no concerns, all fine as long as it was rapidly depleting my source of income.

To make this even more outrageous, the marital trust is, of course, intended for the use of the married couple who established it, to be their main resource during their lifetimes, and the lifetime of the surviving spouse. That is the obvious intention of a marital trust, and that should end the matter, within a family. But it is even true of the wording, if we have to descend to legalities. Not just for taxes, which is what I am requesting, but for daily life.

As you know, the trusts were in Carol's name for two reasons: one, we assumed that she would be the survivor, and two, for estate tax reasons, to assure that the three children would receive the maximum benefits after we both died.

In addition, Max has apparently been allowing distributions from the marital trust to children and grandchildren without consulting me -- and, of course, without calling for investigation of their financial circumstances. That concern is reserved for my request for tax payments from a trust to which, by rights, I should have full access.

I can think of only one explanation: Max, as your lawyer, is seeking to ensure that you receive every penny possible: not just the trusts and educational trusts of which you are the sole beneficiaries, along with the two houses, and almost all of my pension, but even the marital trusts that M and I established for ourselves. I can think of no other reason for his radical change of attitude from the time that the IRA was being exhausted before his eyes to today, with sudden concern about long-term potential problems with the marital trust and possible excessive life expectancy. No doubt he can contrive various legalisms, but I hope it is clear enough why these should not even be considered in matters such as this.

Plainly, this situation -- which I have only partially described -- is unacceptable. And it would be even apart from what I have already written to you, and you know without my spelling it out.

To repeat, I've worked hard all my life and have been very careful to provide for the needs of my children and grandchildren, and to ensure that they will be well cared for after my death, even abandoning my pension and main material possessions (the two houses), in addition to trusts of which they are beneficiaries. After M died, I assumed that I would spend my last days alone. I was lucky to meet a wonderful woman, who has given up her life, her family, and her successful professional career to be with me. We are very happy together, and have been looking forward to a new life in Tucson, in peace and tranquillity, where we can be together and pursue our work and lives. I think I have that right. Instead, I am spending exorbitant amounts of time, energy, and even lawyer's fees to obtain what should be available to me with barely a word. Alone among the people I know, I am compelled to suffer serious aggravation, and to spend time and energy away from life and work, without simple financial security. I hope you can see how unfair this is.

I would therefore like to renew my request that you inform Max that he should resign. I would then like to replace him with my financial adviser, Richard Kahn, who is experienced, highly qualified, and trustworthy. That seems simple enough.

Furthermore, it is urgent. Within the next few days, money has to be available for taxes, and Max's repeated delays and sudden scruples are going to again cost a lot of money that I should not have to spend. I hope it is also clear that I should not have be facing this kind of situation at this stage of my life.

Thank you for your detailed email. As we said before, our understanding of many of the specific points you make is quite different from yours, but we certainly are in agreement that you should be able to live in comfort and financial security. We wish that we could sit down together to try to work this out and communicate better as a family, but since it seems that we can't right now, we'll have to resort to working through the lawyers. As you know, their discussions are underway on the issues you've brought up.

Dear Doddoy,

We have tried to discuss this with you but we have been frustrated—and even frightened—by the results. That's why we've asked you if we could meet with a mediator who could facilitate the discussion and make sure that we are able to actually hear each other. We would still like to do this if you are willing. Because some of the disagreements seem to be about basic facts—which could be clarified by outside sources—we have also asked if these outside sources (Bainco, Max) could be part of the conversation, or could be available to give us clear answers to some of the questions. We would still like to do this, too!

Love, Avi, Diane and Harry

I'm sorry, but this is surreal.

I have repeatedly spelled out the circumstances in extensive detail. Your sole response has been that you disagree, without once saying what you disagree with or why. I have never denied anything you have tried to say, for the simple reason that you have never said anything that could either be affirmed or denied, only that you disagree with what I've spelled out but without any indication of what or why.

In this letter, for the first time, you specifically address something I have written. You write: "We can tell from your tax requests that you have been spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on personal expenses, even after having successfully eliminated the extra costs that you have mentioned as a drain on your resources (the Cape house, the gifts, Anthony's salary, etc)." What I wrote you however is quite different. To repeat: there is a mandatory withdrawal from the IRA. Half of that was distributed to children, grandchildren, and spouses. The other half was spent in taxes and management fees for the entire estate. Cape house, Alex's medical expenses and other gifts, Anthony's salary, etc., were from necessary withdrawals over and above the mandatory withdrawal, hence subject to exorbitant taxes, requiring additional withdrawal. That is before we even get to ordinary living expenses. The request had nothing at all to do with personal expenses, as you can see by just looking at my letters and running through the arithmetic. So the one case you now mention is flatly incorrect.

But this tells us how to proceed: tell me explicitly what you have in mind, and then we can proceed in a reasonable fashion.

There's a simple way out of this impasse -- not by setting up an adversary proceeding with a mediator, as you suggest, but by you telling me what you disagree with in what I have outlined to you and what your reasons are. You have not yet done that in a single letter. So, simply, why not do it right now, and then we can proceed.

Again, I've repeatedly spelled out the circumstances in extensive detail. So, simply, tell me what you disagree with and why. No mediators are necessary, just a direct response telling me what you disagree with and why.

Dear Doddoy,

We recognize that you see a simple way forward -- we should tell you by email what we disagree with in what you have outlined to us, and what our reasons are for disagreeing - but to us this does not seem so simple, for all the reasons we mentioned below. Thus we can't answer you right now, but we didn't want to just leave your email there without any reply. We know this isn't a real response, and we'll get back to you soon with something clearer.

Love, Avi, Diane and Harry

Received your letter, and will go through it carefully. But even on a quick reading there are things that surprise me. To mention just one example, I would be interested in knowing where you received the information about the sale of the apartment in Cambridge and the purchase of the house in Tucson.

To clarify, Deborah is not Valeria's lawyer, she's mine and Valeria's lawyer. Max recognized that he had a conflict of interests, and recommended to me that I should have a different lawyer, so we arranged for Deborah and her firm to represent both of us.

I can see that there are many other important things to discuss and clarify.

Dear Doddoy,

We really hesitated to write our long letter to you last month. We only finally decided to write it because you insisted so many times that we do so. We think, and have thought for a long time, that we need to sit down face-to-face and work through our very substantial differences with you in how we understand your estate plan, financial history, and current situation. But after you asked us so many times in December to discuss it by e-mail, we decided to give that a try. We definitely didn't intend to be legalistic and adversarial, and we really regret that that's how you found our writing. We meant our letter as a heartfelt explanation of our perspective on the issues and how we want to help you understand the problem and fix it. But it doesn't sound like you've understood what we were trying to explain and express. This strongly confirms our feeling that e-mail is not a useful way for us to communicate about these issues.

I understood very well, and responded, pointing out that the information you have received from some source - - which you do not identify, despite repeated requests -- is flatly wrong. In the letter I wrote to you, to which this one was supposed to be a response (while avoiding everything I wrote), I already had explained in some detail why your perspective is incorrect, throughout. I'm sorry that you ignored the letter, but I will repeat the main points below. If you want to sit down face-to-face, OK, though I think a conference call would make more sense.

Before going on, I frankly cannot comprehend why you think it is necessary or even appropriate. I can appreciate your being concerned about my life just as I'm concerned about yours. That's natural in a close-knit family. Over the years, I've often been seriously concerned about the decisions and choices all of you have made, which sometimes seemed questionable or mistaken to me (Mommoy even more so, when she was alive and well). But we never felt that we had a right to interfere or to supervise. I never would have dreamed of asking you for financial statements, or even suggested that we discuss these matters. I'd have been happy to do so if you'd asked, but if not, it's your decisions and my role is only to be supportive -- as I have been, in many ways that you know and I need not review, and also by setting aside ample funds over the years to ensure that you and your children will be well provided for: that includes the trusts of which you are beneficiaries, two houses, almost all of my pension, educational Trusts for grandchildren, and lots of funding along the way for all sorts of purposes. I don't understand why you think it is any different in the present case, and I think it would be a good idea for you to explain, so that we can clear the air.

On a personal level, we are heartbroken to feel that we are kept at such a distance from you in your new life. We were thrilled to learn that you had found a new partner, but we were grieved when we began to realize that this meant we are rarely able to see you.

It didn't mean that at all. Of course, my life became different, and Valeria and I had many things to do to put our new life together. But we took time off from the conference in Mexico to see you, with much pleasure; a few months before we went to Wellfleet to spend some time with you. Harry, Amy and Alex visited in Cambridge. So did Avi, Mariola and Ernesto. I kept seeing Avi whenever we could arrange it, sometimes with Valeria, usually alone. We began spending winters in Tucson, and have now moved. I certainly don't want any distance, and am just as heartbroken as you to think that there might be.

We have also been increasingly distressed to see that instead of feeling happy and relaxed, you feel impoverished.

N's response. Suggestions?

Still surprised that you had the financial information about the apartment and our Tucson house, which we never provided to anyone, because it's no one's business, just as no one knew or raised any questions about earlier cases of purchase and sale.

However, whoever provided you with the information left a few things out, like payments to the cooperative and the costs of the sale. When these are taken into account, you'll find that what we received suffices to cover the costs of our purchase of the apartment, a bad mistake, as I've already explained, since we obviously couldn't afford it, not having the funds from the sale of the Lexington house, as I had expected. There is a little left over for a small mortgage on a much less expensive place that we can afford. In the cooperative there are retired professors, but they are people who have pensions and had property that they could sell to buy the apartment. I had neither, as you know.

Again, I don't know why you brought this up at all, but more generally, don't understand why you are persisting with this correspondence. As I've written several times, and shouldn't have to say, I've worked hard all my life, set aside ample funds to ensure that my children and their families will be well taken care of, and think I have the right to spend my last years in peace and tranquility without being concerned with accounting for financial matters. I don't understand, but will respond to your letter. I'll also send a separate letter concerning some recent interchanges with Max, which you may or may not have heard something about.

I should say that your letter is not easy for me to read, and a response won't be easy to write, for reasons I've explained in earlier letters. In the first place, to repeat again, I'm amazed that we are having this correspondence at all, that we've wasted 5 minutes on this. I also continue to be perplexed about the difference of style: I write you personal letters, and when you respond to them (usually you don't, as in the present case), the letters read as though they are written by lawyers in an adversarial proceeding. On the matter of the loan to buy the Cambridge apartment, for example, I explained that the whole idea of a loan within a family seemed to me utterly surreal, and I agreed only because I assumed, mistakenly, that the loan was for a few weeks until the Lexington house would be sold and would cover the costs of the apartment. If I had been paying attention, I would have known that I didn't own the Lexington house. If I had had a lawyer and financial adviser who were concerned with my situation, they would have informed me that the Lexington house was not mine, and since I had no funds to pay for a new place to live, I couldn't afford to buy an apartment in Cambridge near Harvard Square, surely not a coop with continual fees. That's what I explained in my letter. Your response was a statement of the legal issues as you understood them and advice to have lawyers clarify the matter.

Same now. I wrote you several long personal letters, and this is your first response. Virtually a legal document. And I have to say I'm surprised that you have the information you include, which happens to be incorrect in crucial respects as I explained in earlier letters and will repeat.

In particular, your account of the sale of the Lexington house and the purchase of the apartment is incorrect, as I have just reviewed once again. The facts are as I have already described them, entirely unlike the story you present here, which I presume you received from Max and Sam.

Some of your letter is correct. I did not consult with lawyers before we decided to marry -- I won't comment further on this. And it is true that the earlier estate planning did not take into account that I might marry, a fact that has been causing some remarkable actions. I won't comment on this either, but will simply add below a letter I wrote to you some time ago but never sent.

You state, correctly, that it would be wrong for Valeria to end up as your tenant. But then right below you say that the preferred solution was for the apartment we bought to be in a trust of which you are the beneficiaries, which means that she would end up as your tenant. That aside, why should the apartment have been in a trust at all?

As I wrote you several times, we are very happy together. Valeria gave up her family, friends, and a flourishing professional career to be with me — a very precious gift. I want to make sure that she is well taken care of when I die, not beholden to anyone, not anyone's tenant.

About the "scam," yes, there is one, and I have described it to you several times. To repeat again: the mandatory annual withdrawal from the IRA is about $300,000, which certainly does sound like a lot of money, until we look at what was happening to it. About half went to distributions to the family. The remaining half was spent in taxes and management fees for the entire estate. Over and above this were the payments for Wellfleet and Alex's medical expenses, all drawn from the IRA in excess of the mandatory withdrawal and therefore subject to exorbitant taxes. That's before one cent was used for personal expenses. If I had had a lawyer/financial adviser, he would have informed me that this is going to quickly deplete the IRA. But I didn't. I finally learned about it and ended it.

Same with the demand for financial analysis. When money from my IRA was being distributed to 10 family members, no one asked them to provide a financial analysis. Or in any other case, like distributions from the Marital Trust. The demand arises only when I request money (which I should have access to anyway) for the purpose of paying taxes that are exorbitant for the reasons I have just described again.

You say that my expenditures have gone up since then. Since you seem to have gotten information about my expenses, could you explain how they went up? I can give you some hints. We were, for example, paying tens of thousands of dollars to Max for things like making a will, which, when he finally sent it to us, was so outlandish that we simply trashed it -- for example, with a demand that we list all of our tangible assets, including teaspoons and pillow cases, presumably to make sure that nothing would go to Valeria. And other such conditions. So yes, those were expenses. If you know of other ones, please let me know.

You clearly trust Max and are accepting his version of events and circumstances rather than mine. That surprises me, but to repeat, I don't trust him at all, for good reasons, which I've explained repeatedly -- leaving out a fair amount.

Could add more, but won't. To go back to the beginning, I find it difficult to understand why you are persisting in these inquiries. We are a family. We care for each other. I don't understand why you are doing this.