A "contractor's" review.
I apologize if I repeat myself, but trying to honor my parents' legacy is a lot of work for this debutante.
Per my previous email, my parents talked openly, without filter, not only to the HAS staff, and to their friends, but to several attorneys prior to their passing.
And just so you know, my mother had many meetings with her attorney and his assistant, starting in November 2018. They met over a period of three months.
Oh, how I wish I could have been there! My mother, never shy, was a woman on a mission.
The last of her life before my brother and his son Max, the other contractor of three at HAS took her life.
My parents were both mad as hell for what my brother had done to them, and there was no way they wanted to see my brother, and therefore his family, inherit.
After my brother's last strokes, he went to my parents demanding to see their Trust, and demanded that his heirs receive his share of my parents' estate if he should predecease my parents.
Good try, Andy, but no cigar.
My parents couldn't stand my sister-in-law, or their children.
The Andy and Kathy Viault progeny didn't care much for my parents either. The feeling was mutual.
Why bother to visit my parents, their grandparents, minutes from home and work, when my parents made it clear there was no money for them?
It would be correct to say that my brother's children visited their grandparents in Chicago more often than my parents. No cross country plane trip required.
My parents noted and stated this fact many times.
My daughter and her husband and family lived hours away, but they made routine visits to see my parents, as we sat at our family table. My parents were so proud of my daughter's wonderful family, and my mother was so excited about my daughter's 5 PayPal commercials.
Discretion was key, as my daughter feared for her safety, after my brother had held a meeting years ago to threaten his kids, employees and sub-contractors if they should ever see or do business with my daughter.
Nice guy.
I had also been banished by my brother, after he extorted me for money years before. My father's 90th birthday party was the first time we had been together as a family in years. Or what could be said was just another Andy and Kathy party on the HAS dime, as only two of my parents' friends attended the party. That would be Jim Wagner, their only friend in Los Angeles, and Dick Frankel, their longtime stockbroker.
Jim and Dick will both confirm that my parents said they had disinherited my brother. Dick Frankel said he thought it had "been taken care of" years before, with the attorney he recommended.
The long list of caregivers will all confirm that there were very few visitors, and no one was turned away, other than my brother, after a disastrous visit from my nephew Max, only the second or third visit since my father had passed away.
Unless you include the time Max went with my brother to look for the Trust on October 23rd, while my mother was in the hospital.
This was the first time my brother had a key to the house in years, and the first opportunity to go to the house when no one else was there.
Classic.
The visit is documented in multiple text messages from Andy, on the same date, where my brother begs for the location of the Trust, along with a voice mail message, where my brother panics, as he looks for the Trust.
Ironic, isn't it, that all those months later, my brother would have the first copy of the Trust, that I had never seen, saying that I was disinherited.
It was then that I jumped on the anti-Marina bandwagon. BIG TIME. What a sucker I was, falling, hook, line and sinker. Contaminated by Andy's greed.
Of course my brother had lied.
As usual.
Liar, cheater, and crook that he is.
And I haven't even gotten to the part where I tell you when my brother and his son Max, Andy's soldier, went to my mother, causing unimaginable pain, pounding a stake through her heart, leaving her wounded and bleeding to die the next day.
Malice aforethought.
Memorialized in texts from my brother dated February 4, 2019.
To be continued...
Michele Viault read more