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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

First world problems, 6700 putters and 900 bottles of fine wine.

That said, the bank behaved in a terrible way, but the most important takeaway is that if you have any wealth at all make sure you leave a properly signed and witnessed will.

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I disagree, it's not "first world problems." Largely the saving grace of the family was that they are extremely wealthy. They had the money to hire attorneys to stand up to the bank. In most instances, the bank would have been able to do what they want, because 99% of the people lack the funds for an actual legal fight.

What makes the article new worthy is that the bank lost when it overstepped its bounds, and that this was only possible for someone with an estate of several million dollars. It shows how biased the American legal system is against people without money. How did I come to this conclusion? It's simple, JPMC clearly knows what they are doing when it comes to probate and the legal system. This wasn't some novel plan they had to make money on estate. They knew exactly what they were doing and what moves they could play. It was a shock to them that they lost, and they lost because the plaintiffs had a legal team that could understand and combat it. Most attorneys couldn't handle a case like this, and those that do aren't cheap.

JPMorgan was only involved because they were paid $230k to step up as administrator of the estate, so this malevolent third-party fiduciary situation could have only happened to a family with enough assets for that steep administrative fee to make any sense.

I've no idea what probate/intestate law in Texas looks like, but one party (probably the wife) should have had priority to be the executrix. The children could have fought her appointment, insisted on court supervision of her actions, sued the estate to contest disbursals, etc. The wife could have similarly spent money to defend herself, pay herself an outrageous salary, etc. But she would have been much less brazen and the end result would have just been the all-too-common story about one member of a family screwing over the others.

The story said the wife sued the children and the children sued back the wife. The members of the family have been at war since the beginning.

> The [issue] insisted on hiring JPMorgan as an independent administrator in part because they wanted someone impartial to handle any disputes that might arise... Jo says. “They wanted assurances. So I agreed.”

I don't see any mention of lawsuits resulting in the involvement of JPMorgan, only those filed afterwards. The story [0] makes it sound like Jo acquiesced to hiring an "independent" administrator, which seems to be a case of no good deed going unpunished.

So I stand by the idea that complications from (seemingly voluntarily) hiring a third party executor for $230k puts the situation squarely within "first world problems", meaning caused by out of touch affluence. A family with lesser means would have had to work it out for themselves, under the pointed threat of the entire estate being immediately consumed by legal expenses.

[0] Granted, the whole article is in terms of her side of the story.

>>> Lawsuits ensued. Jo sued the bank. The bank sued Jo. Jo sued her stepchildren. The stepchildren sued Jo. The stepchildren sued the bank. And so on.

Neither Jo nor the children wanted to negotiate. They forced each other to have a third party and they fought until there was nothing left to inherit.

A family with lesser means would ruin themselves with a cheaper executor. It's really common.

That sentence is obviously talking about after JPMorgan was already on board. Do you have another article that states Jo was forced into nominating JPMorgan to act as the administrator, or which one of us is having the reading comprehension fail?

>>> The children, as Jo calls them, even though they were both adults when she married Max, insisted on hiring JPMorgan as an independent administrator in part because they wanted someone impartial to handle any disputes that might arise. “That’s what the children wanted,” Jo says. “They wanted assurances. So I agreed.”

That is the exact passage I had quoted.

The problems here are only first-world due to the number of zeros at the end of the dollar-amounts.

Many other estates with independent administrators and much less value end up similarly screwed up, but don't end up with eye-popping verdicts because no one has enough money left to fight the administrator.

It just so happens that these folks did. It is a total shame that it takes this much money to fight, but one can hope that this big of a verdict makes some of the smaller fish rethink their strategies.

One can hope, anyway.

That's the most shocking thing for me. A bank will try to screw you every way possible. I guess, they want year-end-bonuses and by the time lawsuits are filed no one will care.

>>First world problems, 6700 putters and 900 bottles of fine wine.

First world problems until the bank got involved and took away the "first world problem" thing from them.

The bank got involved at their joint invitation. That doesn't excuse anything the bank did but they really should have been able to work this out amongst themselves. Just to see the 'children' (well, they behave like children anyway) bicker over the perceived use of airmiles without any proof whatsoever in an estate of this magnitude sets the tone nicely.

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