The sins of the fathers and their lawyers ...

    A lawyer I once knew was brought to me in a dream last night. 

    My second wife Jane's first cousin, Sandy. 

    When I closed my law practice, Sandy took over a couple of lawsuits I had filed for clients and became their lawyer. Later, Sandy joined the Spain & Gillon law firm, where my father's attorney, John McKleroy, worked. 

    John and I were classmates at the University of Alabama School of Law. After graduating, John went to work for Spain, Gillon, Riley, Tate and Ansley, in Birmingham. John Gillon represented my father, Golden Flake, and my father's father. John Gillon groomed John McKleroy to replace him as my father and Golden Flake's lawyer.

    Many years prior, my Grandfather Bashinsky's childhood friend Frank Samford bought the Liberty National Life Insurance company out of bankruptcy and made my grandfather a member of the company's board of directors. Liberty National did really well and its common stock increased greatly in value and became the basis of the Bashinsky family's wealth. 

    When I was a boy, John Gillon set up trusts for all my Grandfather Bashinsky's grandchildren. Our grandfather funded the trusts with shares of Liberty National common stock. 

    At the direction of our grandfather, John Gillon wrote into the trusts for my sister and the daughter of my father's brother, Leo, that no marketable securities held by those trusts could be sold without the approval of the oldest living male Bashinsky.

    Move forward to 1994, when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, and my Grandfather Bashinsky was dead and buried almost 20 years. 

    My sister had minor children. She was not happy with the provision in her trust described above. She wanted to have it removed. I told her that I was behind her all the way. 

    Removing the provision from the trust required a court order that amended the trust. To get such an order required convincing a judge that the provision was evil, unconscionable, deranged, unduly onerous, etc.

    My sister asked me to recommend a lawyer. I recommended Sandy. Why not? Many years prior, the provision in her trust had been put there by one of Sandy's senior law partners. 

    Sandy filed a court action to have the trust amended and the provision removed. The judge appointed prominent Birmingham lawyers as guardian ad litems, whose duty was to protect my sister's minor children.

    The lawyers came to my sister's home and treated her like she was trying to steal all the family jewels, heirlooms, gold and silver. My sister was really upset. I told her to hang tight, she was doing the right thing. 

    The wolves, er, lawyers finally realized my sister was simply trying to get the same trust her brothers and male cousins had gotten from our Grandfather Bashinsky. 

    Where the lawyers got the idea that my sister was  trying to get her hands on the trust and abscond with it, I cannot imagine - 

    Unless

the Devil made them do it

    And/or

they were as racially prejudiced against women as my Grandfather Bashinsky

    My father watched all of that unfold.

    That was around when he and his second wife, Joann, had Golden Flake declare a special dividend, over half of which they got, instead of giving Golden Flake's line employees promised raises.

    By then, Joann was super righteous redone saved by Jesus, who had said in the Gospels, it is more blessed to give than to receive, and:

Matthew 6:24-26
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.".

    Perhaps that double whammy was too much for my father to bear? 

    He suddenly had severe pain in his spine. 

    A doctor put my father on oral narcotic pain killers. 

    I suppose my father kept drinking vodka.

    The judge sided with my sister and removed the male chauvinist pig provision from her trust and awarded guardian ad litem fees to the prominent lawyers, to be paid from the trust. 

    Perhaps the judge awarded a fee to Spain, Gillon from the trust, or Spain, Gillon billed my sister for their fee.

    I called Sandy and congratulated him for winning the case. Then, I said Spain, Gillon should not take a few for fixing the trust its senior partner John Gillon had created many years prior. 

    Sandy seemed a bit at loss for words. But not completely. The fee was not waived.

    That struck me as just plain evil, unconscionable, deranged and unduly onerous, etc. 

    Double that, considering John Gillon, Sandy and John McKleroy were devout Bible-reading Christians, who had to know what Jesus said about lawyers in the Gospels:

Luke 11:
42 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

43 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.

44 “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.”

45 One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”

46 Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.".

    When people sing, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so," I wonder if they paid any attention to what the Bible tells them about Jesus.

    I wondered that a lot more after I moved back to Birmingham from Key West in November 2018, and all hell broke loose in my father's legal universe, and I started wanting to kill some but not all lawyers.