A C R O S S    T H E    P O N D by Joe Sinclair  (The Brit)

Let's choose executors and talk of wills - Shakespeare's Richard II

American comedy, it has always seemed to me (and, as a presumptuous Brit, I am ready to be taken to task about this) follows certain fairly rigid traditions.

In the early days of Vaudeville [It's dead you know!  Or so they say.] there was a strong Irish tradition that still, interestingly, persists as part of generally popular regional stand-up comedy in the UK.  I think, for example, of Eddie Foy Jr. and George M. Cohan (whose surname always astonished me, as I felt the "a" needed to be replaced by an "e"). But I get ahead of myself.

As World War I ended and World War II approached and was left behind, the Irish stand-up comedian also became surpassed . . . by his Jewish counterpart.  It must have been someone like Jack Benny who started the trend.  George Burns certainly continued it.  Milton Berle figured in there somewhere.  And then, from the 1960s onwards, a whole slew of New York style Jewish comics took over: Jackie Mason, Alan Sherman, Shelly Berman, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Jerry Seinfeld^[1] . . .

In a way their humor^[2] was like a conscience for the American public.  From the background of their own hyperactive, emotional and neurotic temperaments their humor became a sort of touchstone for American worries and concerns.  If you could laugh at their problems (better still, if you could identify with them and laugh at your own) life became a little easier to bear.  This served to fulfil America's emotional needs.

Anyway, this is something of a deviation from my main theme.  It came about because I was trying to recall which of that post-World War II group of Jewish-American comedians came up with the sketch about reading a last will.  After going through all the bequests very amusingly, he ended with: "And to Louis, who never expected to be mentioned in my will . . . 'Hello Louis!'"

My late Aunt Lily, who featured prominently in my previous article for this column, took this a stage further when preparing her own will.  After all, the fictitious Louis is presumed to have been disliked, or at least ill-regarded, whereas the late, lamented sole sister of my even later lamented mother, loved me dearly.

She knew (or suspected) that a bequest from her fairly modest estate would prove embarrassing to me, since there were family members in far greater financial need than myself.  How then to show her appreciation of the love, the many kindnesses and the help I had given her during her later, frail and pain-filled years?  She found an answer.

She appointed me Executor of her estate.

It was a generous act of love, of trust of gratitude, and of friendship.

(So who needs enemies?)

I believe an executor in America has the same duties and obligations as in the UK, namely to administer the estate of a deceased person and to ensure that that person's instructions are carried out as far as possible in accordance with their known and expressed wishes.

At this point let me introduce you to the psychological concept of Drivers.  Those of you for whom this is "old hat" may take a coffee break and I'll let you know when to come back.

Drivers are powerful messages that are stamped on our personalities from childhood and compel us to behave in specific ways.  They have developed from injunctions (i.e. "don't" messages) that we took on board from our parents and other authority figures.  "Don't be such a cry-baby."  "Don't do that . . . you know it upsets me."  "Don't waste so much time."  "Don't give up so easily."  "Don't settle for second best."

Over a period of time, these messages develop into five main Drivers that are the result of absorbing the injunctions and are (in the same order): Be Strong, Please Me, Hurry Up, Try Hard, Be Perfect.  Normally one of these is more prominent than the others, although they all tend to have some influence on our behaviour patterns.  An over-emphatic desire to obey our Drivers will lead to neurosis.  

Woody Allen is Drivers personified.  He is ruled by them all, and they drive him to the brink of despair . . . and sometimes beyond.

I feel I have a lot in common with Woody Allen.

This is where those clever-clogs know-it-alls can rejoin us

Aunt Lily was a very caring and considerate person.  She took a number of very important and helpful precautions in anticipation of her demise.  A very clear Last Will and Testament was drawn up, spelling out precisely what bequests were to be given and to whom.  She very sensibly and considerately invested sufficient funds in savings bonds to cover these bequests.  She named her dearest friend as residual beneficiary, so that whatever was left in the estate, after dealing with the main bequests, would have a home to go to.  She also took out a funeral plan to ensure that her executor would not have to concern himself with the cost of the funeral.  She even left a little cash, hidden around her small (sheltered accommodation) apartment, so that initial expenses could be met in advance of the will being proven.  

And then she somewhat inconsiderately became ill and died.  In the process she overlooked a number of rather crucial matters.

  She did not - could not - anticipate her sudden illness, the pain of which rendered her incapable of her habitual power of concentration.  Nor did she anticipate that it would involve hospitalisation and death in hospital.  Her pronounced intention was to die in her own bed, causing as little trouble as possible to friends and family.

  Correspondence had thus been allowed to accumulate during the several weeks prior to her hospitalisation.   Envelopes containing cheques and bills were unopened.  Official enquiries remained unanswered.  And once in hospital, she was so sedated that she was quite unable to give instructions as to how it should be handled - even had she recalled that they existed.

  During her long lifetime of almost 90 years, I doubt if she ever threw away a single piece of paper.  Her failure to discuss the enormous accumulation of material with her proposed executor meant that every piece of paper had to be sifted and studied.

  Amongst the unopened (or unattended) correspondence were such items as income tax refunds and housing benefit demands which were large enough (having regard to the fairly moderate size of her estate) to make a significant impact on the execution of the will.

  This meant that the modest balance of the estate that she anticipated going to her dear friend was either going to be much larger than she ever imagined, or subject to so much difficult negotiation that all her plans to avoid complication had gone for nothing.

  Most important of all was the fact that she had overlooked the Drivers of her nephew and executor Joe, who felt obligated to safeguard as much as possible for the residual beneficiary (Be Perfect and Please You), to do it as expeditiously as possible (Hurry Up) and to be constantly critical of his own failure to do so (Try Harder).  The only Driver that didn't get an obvious airing was Be Strong.  At the end of the day, however, and at the end of his tether, this was the only one that had real significance.

So what did I do?  And what did I learn from the exercise?  And what advice would I like to pass on to you, dear Reader?

  There is a simple solution for the executors of most estates who wish to avoid much of the work and hassle.  But as with all simple solutions, it comes at a cost.  It is to employ a professional to do the work of administration for you.  In the UK, this is usually a solicitor - what you, in the USA, call an attorney.

  I considered this course, but the minimum cost of legal intervention would have amounted to almost half the anticipated residual bequest to my aunt's friend and would have considerably offended my Be Perfect Driver.  So I determined to do the job myself.

  Three months later I'm still trying to complete the administration of the estate.  My task has been rendered much more difficult than it needed to be as a result of sheer inefficiency on the part of various official bodies (so what else is new?) complicated by the even greater inefficiency of the British postal service.  Much of this is documented in the section of this article entitled Time Was When . . . 

  The most valuable lesson I learned from this exercise, which I'm now going to pass on to you, is that the best way to ensure that the executor of your will has a relatively hassle-free time (particularly if he's as Driver-ridden as I am) is to make him or her the residual beneficiary of the estate.  That way, if they wish to pay for professional help, they can pay for it themselves, or at least know that it's their own money they are saving.

And the first thing I did once I had learned this lesson was to change my own will.  My best friend is no longer my executor.  After all, as I suggested earlier, "With friends like me . . . "  And I'd hate to have someone write an article like this about me when I'm gone.

On September 12 I shall be throwing a BBQ party to celebrate a rather special birthday of my own.  I won't reveal the age, but the candles will stretch from one end of the garden to the other.  It would have been the occasion, too, of Aunt Lily's 90th and I had planned a really big event.  Well, it was not to be.  But we will be having a ceremony of scattering her ashes in the brook at the end of the garden, and we'll raise a glass and toast the memory of a really brave and thoughtful lady who taught me a lot in life, and has ensured that the lessons would not end with her death.

  . . . a letter posted for inland delivery in the UK was always received the following day.  On occasion a letter posted in the morning was actually delivered to the addressee the same day.  Now we drop letters into the mail box with a prayer on our lips and wonder if it might be quicker to resort to another form of mailing.  

   . . . there was only one class of "normal" service and a minimum of two (sometimes even three) daily deliveries.  Now we count ourselves lucky if there's a delivery at all.  As for second-class mail . . . pardon my mirth.  Of course,  we could always try . . .

   . . . public sector service providers, such as Housing Benefit organisations, used to take the words "public" and "service" literally.  Now they might more appropriately be named Public Service Strategy Providers.  The shell is still there, but the contents too often nowadays are brain dead.

    . . . a public service ethos was the prized possession of the members of Unison (the UK's biggest public service union).  This had been replaced by the role of markets and competition and led to an "increasingly ideological" divide between its members and the government, was the message of Unison's Dave Prentis at its 2002 Conference.

      . . . the direct accountability to government of service providers tended to ensure efficiency and effectiveness; now the political correctness and expediency within contracted-out providers almost certainly ensures a reduced level of service.

    . . . Housing Benefit was a key service for low income families. The many failures of private contractors in this area has thrown the entire system into disarray.  According to the Benefits Fraud Inspectorate examining discrepancies in Lambeth (London), "recipients of privatised services have suffered from strategies aimed at saving money and protecting profits, leading to severe delays in processing claims and huge backlogs." 

How did this public service inefficiency impact on my executorship duties?

  It took one month before the Grant of Administration was obtained from the Probate Office.  They claim to have sent the document three times by normal (second-class!!) mail before finally, after considerable pressure by me, they sent it Recorded Delivery, and it arrived.

Was this the fault of the Royal Mail?  Or was it inefficiency on the part of the Probate Office?  One will never know.

  It took three weeks for the bank to release the funds from the estate's blocked bank account.  The bank claimed it had never received the completed withdrawal forms that I had returned in their own stamped-addressed envelope.  It required my attendance at their local branch office, and insistence that they fax a new set of completed forms to their head office, before the funds were finally released.  And then it took one week and three phone calls (each one assuring me that "the cheque is in the post") before this part was finalised.

Was this the fault of the Royal Mail?  Or was it inefficiency on the part of the bank?  How can one tell? 

  Shortly after Aunt Lily died a statement arrived from the Housing Benefit department showing her to be in credit to the amount of £640.  I asked for this to be settled by cheque.  The reply was to send me a demand on the Estate in the sum of £505 as being underpayment of a required reimbursement of benefit.  I immediately raised an objection and asked for a proper explanation.  Two months later I am still without a response.

This is clearly a confusion between the local government department responsible for sheltered accommodation and the private organisation that they employ to administer the system.  Will it ever be resolved?  Who can say?

  Six weeks ago I made an official complaint to the Royal Mail Customer Services Centre.  This was in respect of the non-delivery of the Grant of Administration, but I also had failed to receive my pay slip - mailed a week earlier - and a review copy of a book.  At this time of writing (August 9) I made a further complaint, to the effect that I had had no response to my earlier complaint and that, in the meantime, another copy of the book and my current month's pay slip had also not been delivered.  Nor had my own bank statement that had been posted on August 2.

I referred to my previous conversation with a Mr David White.  My telephone interlocutor, a woman, said she had never heard of him.  I pointed out that he was one of her colleagues.  "Do you realise we have over 300 people working here?" she demanded brusquely.

I couldn't resist the response: "What a pity you're not all out delivering letters."

The comment did not go down too well, but it made me feel a hell of a lot better.

Postscript: On a ramble recently with my walking group, The Poly Ramblers, I mentioned this article to a friend, Valerie Evans, and learned that she had had a number of similar experiences to do with executing a will.  She also had a number of gripes about reduced standards of service in public transport and publishing.

I asked her for a contribution to these columns and she kindly obliged.  You can find the resultant article by clicking on Appendix.

^[1] And lest I be accused of sexism, let me not forget the female counterparts of these comics: Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Joan Rivers, Bette Midler, Sarah Silverman and many others.

Here are some old one-liners you might like to be reminded of.

Rodney Dangerfield: "I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous; everyone hasn't met me yet."

Groucho Marx: "Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."

George Burns: "This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's read only two."

Mel Brooks: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is if you fall into an open sewer and die."

Oscar Levant: "A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it."

Woody Allen: "It's not that I'm afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

^[2] In deference to the majority of my readers I've given the American spelling rather than the British "humour",  to avoid receiving all those "Did you know . . .?" messages. This will be my only such concession.  But keep an eye out for "cheque" (check), "centre" (center), and others.