The Surest Way

Ben Reach seemed to spend more time on fights among siblings these days than any other problem. And the leading cause of the disputes was joint ownership of real estate inherited from a parent. 

“Don’t leave your children property to own together. It’s a sure recipe for an ugly fight,” Ben would say. His father had had a saying forty years earlier, “Surest way to destroy brotherly love is to leave brothers shared ownership of a farm — or anything else.”

Fred Eanes, owner of Deep Pond Plantation, had come to Ben for estate planning. In his eighties and a widower, he had since retirement lived on an — and loved — the property, a dandy shooting estate near the Florida line below Thomasville. Fred’s problems began with the fact Deep Pond was not quite large enough to divide into two properties, and his two sons each loved it as much as Fred did. 

The older son, Bill, was a lawyer in Chicago. Robert, the younger, was a physician in Boston. Both were in the busiest years of practice. Fred scheduled separate times for each son and his family to come to Deep Pond and enjoy dove shooting, quail hunting and spring gobbler hunting. Each family came every other Christmas. Fred did not invite them to come together because their wives disliked one another. 

Fred had at first thought it would be no problem for the sons to own Deep Pond together after his death. Their busy practices of law and medicine did not allow them more vacation time than half-time use of Deep Pond would accommodate. He could not believe his sons could not amicably share Deep Pond. In fact, splitting the expenses in 50-50 ownership would be better for each than sole ownership, Fred figured. Fred was wrong. 

For a year, Fred and Ben met monthly to study Fred’s problem. The second half of the year they asked Sam Nixon MD to join their meetings. Each meeting was conducted during a weekend fly fishing trip, fresh or salt water, the place picked by one of the three on a rotating basis.   

On their last fishing trip, to a modest North Georgia mountain lodge, Sam suggested this after a Saturday night supper of their favorite trout recipe, caught by them and prepared by the wife in the wife-husband owner-manager team, topped off with pecan pie and vanilla ice cream, 

“Fred, on an interim basis, why don’t you provide that they inherit Deep Pond jointly, each with the right to propose to the other a price. The other can then say, ‘I will buy your half at that price’ or ‘I will sell you my half at that price’.”

Sam’s proposal received a unanimous vote, after which Fred and the curmudgeons staggered off to bed. 

Fred died in his sleep a week later. Ben and Sam said simultaneously and spontaneously in their Friday afternoon meeting in Ben’s library-conference room, “Fred was a lucky man.” 

They served a pall bearers next morning at Deep Pond. An urn containing Fred’s ashes was buried beneath a live oak on the highest point on Deep Pond, beside those of Fred’s widow and near Fred’s dog cemetery.