the company received the documents. I then told him he needed to talk to an experienced estate attorney because Texas only allows four years to elapse between death and filing the Will for probate. After that, an Administration of the Estate would be necessary which is nothing more than the probate court issuing an order that is equivalent to an affidavit of heirship. It also serves as a conveyance to the heirs per Texas laws of descent and distribution. He told me that he is “in touch” with such an attorney, but was told just to send a copy of the Will and death certificate to the companies paying royalties to his mother. They would start paying him and his brother, and the rest of the estate would be handled later, he told me. I quickly ended the conversation on a cheerful note, but immediately dived into reading the Will from beginning to end. Two things in it caught my eye immediately. First, his brother was named in the Will to be executor of the Estate, not this man. Secondly, it gave his brother authority to temporarily manage the property being devised to the brother with whom I had just spoken, “from time to time, as necessary.” Whoa. What was going on here? The second thing I saw was that the clause distributing the real property simply said “to my sons, to be divided equally.” It was strange that she didn’t give the number of sons or their names. Two sons had been identified by name earlier in the Will, stating that she would be survived by her sons Tom and Harry. That seemed odd. I decided I needed to bypass the brother who sent the documents and contact the other brother. I called the first brother back and trying hard to sound like an airhead, explained that I forgot to tell him I needed the full contact information for him and his brother, where we could send a W-9 to get tax IDs. Not blinking, he gave me all of his information, including his tax ID, over the phone, and gave me his brother’s address and phone number. I thanked him again and hung up. I wasn’t able to reach the other brother, Harry, until the next day.
Harry was quite cordial and businesslike on the phone, a stark contrast to his brother Tom. I told him that we had received the documents from Tom, but we received only the Will and death certificate, that the court documents were missing. He immediately asked me if the Codicil had been included with the Will. At that moment, I knew immediately this piece of maintenance wouldn’t be ordinary. I told the brother that because we had received the documents, at the very least we must suspend all revenues being paid to his deceased mother, which had continued going out all this time. He said that was fine, but that I needed a copy of the Codicil and he would send it to me. About a week later the Codicil arrived as an attachment in an email that explained that there were some “family issues” that were being “worked out” before filing the Will for probate. He didn’t explain further. Then I read the Codicil. The problem being “worked out” jumped out at me right away. The Codicil said that the mother was adding a “special bequest” to her son “Dickie”, that special bequest being a deposit of whatever amount necessary into the investment account already established for Dickie, to bring the balance to $1,000,000. It went on to identify the Guardian of Dickie and instructions that the Guardian was to use income from the investment to assist in Dickie’s care “until he reaches the age of 18.” What? The death certificate showed she was 86 years old when she died almost four years previously, so how on earth could she be survived by a minor child? The Codicil was executed just two years before she died. I was ready to throw the deceased owner’s account into suspense for death and create a pdf containing a memo explaining everything I knew all of the documents and correspondence. Then Tom called me. He had found out that Harry sent the Codicil, and he wanted to explain. He was certain that all of this would be worked out “very soon,” so could I hold off suspending the account? No, of course I could not. To try and make his case for holding off suspending, he began his explanation.
G rowth T hrough E ducat i on - O c tober / N ov ember / D e c ember 2025 13
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