Massachusetts Lawyer Blog

Family care and inheritance issues can get ugly, fast. The late Perry Whatley's story dramatically illustrates this point. Whatley, at age 82, married his companion and caregiver. Whatley's niece and his new bride (note, now his sole heir) both sought to make decisions abou Whatley's care and his fortunes. Eventually their dispute lands in probate court.

Whatley was summonsed to a probate competency hearing. Instead of defending his competence in court, however, Whatley took flight abandoning his home and $2,000,000 in savings. The full story spanning Whatley's trial and tribulations from Texas to Massachusetts is reported in Lise Olsen's Houston Chronicle article, Perry Whatley battles probate court to the end. [When probate court threatened to take away his assets, Perry Whatley gave up and fled and ultimately died far from his home.]

Posted by Kevin P. Whitaker | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Competency , Probate Litigation

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D.N.R. -- these three letters are an abbreviation for do not resuscitate but they hold vastly different meanings for different people. Regardless of one's beliefs, it remains a deep personal decision and one that should be known by family members and potential medical decision makers.

Have you communicated your preferences with both your family and your physicians? Perhaps these topics aren't easy to discuss, but they're unlikely to get any easier with the passage of time. A Boston Globe article recently addressed this in an informative way. See Patricia Wen's article,For many, Do Not Resuscitate' too painful to discuss.

Posted by Kevin P. Whitaker | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Health Issues

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This blog is interested in some of the issues and problems arising in probate court or probate disputes. These probate issues can span the full spectrum of human behavior. Probate has it all: death, taxes, grief, money, family, jealousy, secrets, lies, crimes, property, lawsuits, debts, spurned lovers, isolation, and unpredictability, just to name a few.

Probate disputes can bring out the best and the worst in people and the institutions involved with a decedent or his/her estate. This blog aims to look at glimpses of the the law, the processes, the people, the issues involved, and how ultimately things get resolved, or sometimes don't.

Of course, my clients private lives shall remain private. Instead I will examine elements from these and others to drive discussion. Public cases, on the other hand, seem an appropriate vehicle to visit the difficulties and challenges ordinary people like you and me are facing daily.

Posted by Kevin P. Whitaker | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: General

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