Collusion

“I’m afraid to tell you that there is a very high degree of liability here.”

As the lawyer, spoke to us I felt the color draining from my face. We had come from my mother’s funeral to the attorney’s office for the reading of the will, but that wasn’t going to happen. My husband leaned over to me and whispered, “I think we better take notes.” My brother and sister stared intently at the attorney, waiting for whatever was going to come next.

The attorney continued. “I’m afraid this will be pretty grim news. Since your mother was the driver of the car, there will be lawsuits from all those in the car with her. Therefore, there cannot be any estate distributions until all the lawsuits are settled—the estate will be essentially on hold, possibly for several years. You must also realize that even though those in the car (her sister, her best friend, and her physician) will each have attorneys and they will each be forced to sue the estate by their own insurance companies. And because of those lawsuits, you must not be talking with any of these people about any part of the lawsuits or the wreck. We cannot allow any possibility of collusion that could impact the final results—there cannot be any deal-making between you all. We do know how difficult this is. It will be our job to do what we can to protect your mother’s estate assets. And there’s one more thing. We will also be suing the trucking company as there is some possibility that there was fault there, but that again means a long time in the courts and we don’t know exactly how it will go. Now, what questions do you have?”

We were all stunned and speechless.  What can you say? In the midst of a very tough time of grief (we had lost our father the previous year), we now had to learn about the legal system and we couldn’t even talk about what had happened with the very people who could help us cope and who were also grieving. But there was no time for grieving now. The attorneys gave us an expected timeline and expectations for the next few months. They advised us to go immediately to the insurance office so we could find out as much as possible about Mom’s car insurance.

Visibly shaken, we moved from the attorneys’ office to Mom’s house for a search to find out things we didn’t know. None of us, including Mom, had planned for any of this. They had been on their way to NYC to see the Rockettes (a bucket list item), and the wreck happened on the way to the airport. After searching the house, we did find most of the information we needed in a shoe box in one of the kitchen cabinets.

So many questions to answer…Where were all her bank accounts? Who had the insurance? What did it cover? What are we going to do with the house? Who has access to any of this—can we write checks or is everything on hold? How could this happen? How are we going to manage all this from our homes in California and eastern Kansas? Somehow, we did.

Within six months, three lawsuits had been filed against the estate plus ours against the trucking company. We knew very little about the lawsuits from those in the car because we weren’t allowed to talk about that. Family celebrations became very difficult because there were so many lines we couldn’t cross. We learned about Mom’s insurance umbrella policy which provided a significant amount of additional coverage. We just had to wait and see if it was enough to cover all the medical costs for those in the car.

All those involved had to go through depositions and we had to learn to read through those testimonies for important information that could help with our court case. The eyewitnesses seemed to conflict with one another about what had happened and whose fault it was. The medical bills were coming in and we felt very sure that there would be nothing left in the estate when this was all over. We had to get permission from the court to sell the house so there would be funds available for court costs, etc.

Over the next three years, conference calls with the attorneys became a weekly ritual. There were so many attorneys involved, we had trouble keeping all the names and numbers straight. The bills kept piling up. Gradually, the settlements started to come through and after five years, the last one was settled for those in the car. We were fortunate that the umbrella coverage was enough to pay all the bills, but it was a huge amount. The suit against the trucking firm was too difficult to prove because the evidence wasn’t strong enough and it was likely to go to jury trial with an indefinite result and several more years, so we decided to stop it because we just wanted this part to be over. And then, it was. Now, we could grieve.