I hate lawyers.
I don’t, really. I have in-laws and friends who are lawyers, and I don’t hate them. I guess what I really hate is the sort of institutionalized bureaucracy and down right idiocy to which some lawyers are more prone than are members of the general public. Like today, for example, when I had to drive to Reidsville to pick up a personal item from my uncle’s estate. The firm told me it was much too large to ship, so I had to come pick it up and sign some papers while I was there. I made an appointment for 1:00 today, because that was the least objectionable time for me this week.
Of course they “lost” the appointment, and when I called to say I’d be about five minutes late dute to misjudging my travel time, they asked if I could come later this afternoon instead. I informed them that I’d already driven an hour to get to Reidsville from Winston-Salem, and I had no intention of lurking around for a few hours with nothing to do but sit downtown and watch the rednecks stroll by. So they said I could come on in.
When I arrived, I saw that this “big” item was in a surprisingly small box that would’ve cost between five and seven bucks to ship to me. The item itself was of minimal value. Thus, I wasted almost three hours, and between fifteen and twenty bucks in gas to complete a transaction that could have been handled for the price of seven dollars and two faxes. No wonder it’s taken fifteen months to settle this relatively simple estate if everything they do is this bloody convoluted. I shudder to think how many hours of this shit they’ll be billing for and how much of the final amount they’ll wind up with.
Is a lawyer really needed in an estate case? What would the county/state do if you refused to hire one? I wonder? Lawyers write themselves into peoples’ wills, but if you specified in your will that you wanted a human rather than a lawyer to handle your estate, would the jurisdiction allow it? Or have lawyers’ lobbies written the need for an estate lawyer into law?
I think involving a lawyer is at the executor’s discretion if it’s not otherwise specified in the will. You don’t have to have one per se; some people just find it easier, especially if they don’t want to do any of the work. I do know that the executor has fiduciary responsibility and must protect the estate from unwarranted expense. which could conceivably include excessive attorney fees.