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There Should Be A Law Against It!
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If college grads can't make sense of it, who needs it?
of TheColumnists.com
I’m mad as
hell, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Tess, my loving
wife, is equally frustrated. The time’s sneaking up on us
when we have to take a hard look at our trust agreements and
other pertinent papers to check that everything’s in order.
Example: We have individual revocable agreements. I’m Tess’s
successor trustee; she’s mine.
So we dragged the documents out of the vault and started to read.
All at once I felt like a sixth grader. “That’s not
bad,” Tess confessed. “I didn’t get past fourth.”
We had started with Tess’s revocable trust agreement and
learned right off that Tess is the Grantor (“hereinafter
called the “Grantor”), and Tessie A/K/A Tess Dreyfack
, is (also) Trustee, (“hereinafter called the “Trustee”).
So far relatively simple. No problems yet.
We read on, wanting to make sure we are
adequately covered as successors to each other, that when we
die our assets are properly distributed to our children and grandchildren
who will be legally entitled to squander them as they will, and
that we will be reasonably well protected from the tax sharks,
etc. Things like that.
So we skipped from section to section wondering how much it would
cost for our lawyer to square us off on this stuff.
So we read on. In one paragraph we were informed that: “If
Grantor’s husband, RAYMOND DREYFACK, shall survive Grantor,
or is presumed to survive the Grantor, then, and in such event,
the Trustee shall place into, as a separate and distinct fund,
to be known as “Trust A,” a pecuniary amount equal
to the fund to the amount by which the value of the property
disposed of by this Trust…”
At this point I sprained a dendrite in the left sector of my
medulla oblongata.
To be fair, the trust is composed in English.
No foreign language intrudes. But a typical sentence runs from
50 to 70 words. Some exceed 100. The text includes a mind eroding
assortment of whereases, nothwithstandings, herinafters, hereunders,
deems advisables, herein to the contraries, and the like.
All right! Enough already. I don’t consider myself brilliant,
or even bright. But I am the author of 28 published nonfiction
books, two novels, and a collection of short stories. Plus I
am sufficiently well educated and experienced to have been selected
to teach a course at NYU. Yet I must confess that these damned
Trust Agreements, penned in lawyerspeak, floor me. I could go
through them 10 times and still need an interpreter. They’re
no more comprehensible to Tess who is pretty good at comprehending
stuff.
I recall once, on a brochure writing assignment for a nationally
known consulting firm my task was to clarify for potential clients
a productivity improvement program contrived by the firm. When
I handed in the completed brochure it took about three minutes
for the editorial director to reject it.
“Given this brochure,” he grumbled, “a potential
client could develop and implement the program himself. He wouldn’t
need us.”
Lawyers seem to apply the same modus operandi. If clients
lacking advanced degrees or who don’t happen to be summa
cum laude, could understand the documents they produce, their
fees would be cut in half. As I said, there’s nothing I
can do about it. I know of no law requiring attorneys to create
documents in comprehensible English.
Still, it pisses me off. So when Tess and I visited our lawyer
I griped about it.
He was soothingly sympathetic. “Many lawyers would have
taken 50 pages to produce your 24-page trust agreement,”
he replied. “I kept it as simple as possible.”
Yeah, sure.
We spent almost an hour in his office and on parting I asked,
“How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” he replied.
In response I blinked.
Outside his door, having calculated that we had saved at least
four or five hundred dollars, Tess turned to me and said, “What
a nice guy!”
Go figure it out.
©2006 by Ray Dreyfack.
The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895
Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This story
first posted Nov. 13, 2006.
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