Its name was apt when Bud Branch bought it after selling the business he founded and by brains and hard work grew to great value, then sold for cash. From age sixty to eighty Bud enjoyed it immensely, as did his sons Al and Fred, both hard chargers like their dad but in law (Al, counsel for plaintiffs badly injured) and venture capital (Fred, private equity in Silicon Valley). To deepen the plot, Al and Fred had different mothers, Al’s Wife One, Fred’s Wife Two, the Trophy Wife. Result, predictably, Al and Fred hated one another.
But Al and Fred both loved their dad, and Happiness Plantation. They were but four years apart in age, Al now fifty, Fred now forty six. Each wanted above all else to inherit Happiness Plantation. But it was not large enough to be divided into two. This presented to Bud Branch a dilemma. An unsolvable dilemma, he sensed. He turned to the venerable lawyer, Ben Reach, for counsel.
Bud was a widower now. He would leave what he had, after Estate Taxes, equally for the benefit of Al and Fred and their descendants, per stripes. But who would get Happiness Plantation? It could not be divided into two, and it could not be jointly owned, Bud believed.
So? That was the dilemma Bud Branch presented it to Ben Reach.
Ben had seen it several times before. He asked Bud’s permission to consult with Sam Nixon MD about it, to which Bud readily agreed (Sam was his primary care physician, or family doctor, in Sam’s words).
A week later, Ben and Sam met with Bud. This is what they proposed.
“Let us meet with Al and Fred. We will explain your dilemma. We will propose you leave Happiness Plantation to them equally and jointly, to share its use and costs equally. With the provision that at any time either of them can demand that Happiness Plantation be subject to a sealed bid auction between them. Only them as bidders. The high bidder becomes sole owner of Happiness Plantation. The low bidder gets in cash half the whole value bid price.”
Bud authorized what Ben and Sam proposed. The sons Al and Fred at first protested. But in a week they acquiesced in the curmudgeons’ plan.
Bud died a year later, suddenly of a heart attack. Al and Fred have enjoyed Happiness Plantation harmoniously for five years. Each knowing he can buy out the other any time he wants to erase the tension. Each knows it is only a matter of money, and he is in control. And neither has time for more than half the hunt dates, and each knows the other will pay on time half the carry.