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Overview
Rachel calls them "zombies." The legal term for such inheritance plans is "the dead hand," the English translation of the Old French term "mortmain." The term refers to the attempt by wealthy individuals to exert perpetual ownership over property (and future generations) through legal documents prepared before they die. But not even the most obsessed tycoon or his skilled attorneys can foresee every future contingency. To quote the old Yiddish maxim, "Man plans, and God laughs." And angry descendants sue.
It's so true. Rachel suddenly finds herself representing two women—one a young widow, one an older divorcee—in a pair of nasty zombie cases where the outcome of each hinges upon a clause in a contested estate plan.
Client Cyndi Mulligan is the trophy widow of the late Bert Mulligan, a billionaire entrepreneur whose last will and testament left his estate to Cyndi's unborn daughter. The challenge comes from Bert's angry first wife and her angrier only son. Their claim: Cyndi's daughter—born eleven months after Bert's death—cannot possibly be Bert's child.
In the other case, Rachel represents Marsha Knight, the first wife of the wealthy founder of a women's lingerie manufacturer. Marsha has been sued by his young widow, who seeks to invalidate Marsha's divorce settlement and, in the process, impoverish her through invocation of the ancient and nearly inscrutable Rule Against Perpetuities.
As the trial date approaches in each lawsuit, the threats to Rachel and her two clients begin to escalate. Zombies, as Rachel discovers, are hard to kill. And even worse, they can still kill—and where least expected.
The Dead Hand is written with the verve, humor, and legal smarts that are trademark Michael Kahn.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781464206771 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Sourcebooks |
| Publication date: | 09/06/2016 |
| Series: | Rachel Gold Series , #10 |
| Pages: | 238 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Kahn is the award-winning author of: eleven Rachel Gold novels; three standalone novels: Played!, The Sirena Quest, and, under the pen name Michael Baron, The Mourning Sexton, and several short stories.
In addition to his day job as a trial lawyer, he is an adjunct professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches a class on censorship and free expression. Married to his high school sweetheart, he is the father of five and the grandfather of, so far, seven.
Read an Excerpt
The Dead Hand
A Rachel Gold Mystery
By Michael A. Kahn
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2016 Michael A. KahnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4642-0677-1
CHAPTER 1
As I gazed at my newest client, I reminded myself that there is a first time for everything. I've been a lawyer now for more than a decade. Over those years I've handled plenty of oddball cases. But never one of these. I didn't even know they still existed.
"That bastard screwed me," she said, shaking her head in anger. "Good and hard."
I glanced down at the lawsuit petition on my desk and then back at my client. "You may be right, Marsha."
"May?" Her eyes widened. "I'd say definitely."
She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "He totally screwed me, Rachel. You just know that when they put him into his grave he had a big grin on his face, right?" Not being familiar with mortuary protocols, I treated her question as rhetorical.
I gestured toward the petition. "I'll need to do some legal research, Marsha. I've never had a case like this."
"I understand. My daughter told me these cases are unusual."
"Is she a lawyer?"
"Not yet. Katie's in law school. Third year. Wash U. That's how I got your name."
"Katie Knight?" The name wasn't familiar. "She knows me?"
"Oh, no. She got your name from one of her professors. She told him about my situation. She told him I needed a lawyer that was smart and tough."
"Well, well." I raised my eyebrows. "Her professor recommended me?"
"Oh, my goodness, he did more than just recommend you. He said you were tougher than every smart lawyer in town and smarter than every tough lawyer." Marsha laughed. "You ready? He told her, and I quote, 'You won't find an attorney in this town with a bigger set of cojones than Rachel Gold.'"
"Ah, Professor Goldberg ...?"
"How did you know?"
"Wild guess."
Marsha Knight was in her fifties. Slim build, dyed-blond hair, lots of makeup, dressed in what I'd call a Full Neiman, right down to the Louis Vuitton monogram handbag and black-and-silver pumps that were either Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin.
Her smile faded, her lower lip quivered, and she dropped her head.
I waited.
She took a deep breath, shook her head, and exhaled. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes.
"I don't have any savings. Zilch. If that bitch wins, I'll be left with nothing. Not even my apartment. She'd evict me. I know it."
I slid the box of Kleenex across the desk. "Here, Marsha."
She took a tissue and wiped her eyes.
Once she'd regained her composure, I guided our conversation through some easy personal topics — which for Marsha Knight included her personal trainer; her only child, Katie; and her tennis game — to the specifics of my attorney engagement agreement (including the retainer check, which she'd brought with her), and eventually back to the lawsuit.
I leafed through the petition and the attached exhibits. "So the divorce was — let's see — almost six years ago?"
"Wow, time flies."
"And this real estate deed — the document marked Exhibit A, here — it was part of your divorce settlement?"
"It was."
I skimmed through Exhibit B. "But not in the actual divorce decree."
"I think that's right. There was some technical reason. But the deed was recorded. I know that for a fact. I have a stamped copy from the Recorder of Deeds."
I read through the grant portion of the deed. "Who was your divorce lawyer?"
"Adam Fox."
I looked up. "Adam Fox." I frowned. "Is he the one ...?"
"Yes." She sighed and shook her head. "He's the one that died."
I nodded and flipped back to the first page of the petition. "So this Danielle Knight — she's your ex-husband's widow?"
"That's her." Marsha glared as she shook her head. "Young enough to be his daughter."
We went over a few other details of the case. I explained that we'd meet again after I'd researched the legal issues. Before we parted, I asked her if there was anything else — anything at all — that I needed to know about the divorce.
She thought it over and then shook her head. "Nope."
It's the standard question every lawyer asks a new client during that initial meeting, and Marsha Knight gave me the standard answer. As I've learned over the years, the standard answer is almost always false.
CHAPTER 2"Cojones, eh?"
"A multicultural figure of speech." Benny shrugged. "Call me bilingual, Señora."
"I'll need more than cojones for this one, Señor" I shook my head. "I didn't know these cases even existed in real life."
"Me, neither. When Katie told me about her mother's problem, I had an acid flashback to our fucking bar review course. Was it even on the goddamn bar exam?"
I thought back, trying to remember. "I don't think so. Thank goodness. I'd have blown it."
Benny Goldberg and I met many years ago as first-year associates in the Chicago office of Abbott & Windsor, then one of the largest law firms in Chicago, now one of the largest law firms in the world, with over three thousand lawyers in offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. We'd been in the same bar review course that summer, along with two dozen other Abbott & Windsor newbies and hundreds of other law school grads. We all sat for the bar exam at the end of that summer.
"Do they still teach it in law school?" I asked.
"Yep. I checked with one of profs who teaches Property to the One-L's. Phoebe Hecht. She said she spends two full classes on it. The property law geeks even have an acronym for it: RAP. Win that case, woman, and you'll be known as the Rap Queen."
"Rap?"
"R-A-P."
I frowned as I silently repeated the letters and then nodded. "Ah, got it."
The Korean-American server approached our table with a full tray of food. "The Gogi Bowl?"
"Me," I said.
The server gave Benny a quizzical look. "And these burritos?"
"Yes?" Benny said.
"All three for you, sir?"
"Don't worry, pal. I'll save room for dessert."
Benny and I were having lunch at Seoul Taco, a favorite spot of ours in the University City Loop. Seoul Taco began as a food truck and expanded to a restaurant. It offers a spicy and delicious Korean take on Mexican street food. Benny's burritos, for example, had kimchi fried rice, bulgogi meat, and a special Seoul sauce. One of those giant burritos was enough for any normal person. No one has ever accused Benny of being a normal person. Among his many unique qualities, the man has capacity.
"So they still teach it, huh?" I leaned back in my chair. "What were some of those goofy law school hypotheticals?"
"Let's see." Benny squinted a moment. "There was the Case of the Fertile Octogenarian."
"That's right." I smiled. "We had that one at Harvard, too. We also had the Case of the Unborn Widow. At least that was its name. I can't remember the facts."
"My favorite was the Case of the Magical Gravel Pit."
I frowned. "Which one was that?"
"The property transfer was to be made as soon as the gravel pit ran out of gravel."
"And?"
"And when would that happen? That was the flaw. The grant might not vest for centuries."
I took a sip of iced tea and shook my head. "Ridiculous."
"Not so fast. When word about this case gets out, you'll be a goddess in that oddball legal community. A fucking trust-and-estates hottie."
"Be still my heart."
We ate in silence for a while.
Benny said, "So her ex-husband died, eh?"
"About six months ago."
"Rich, eh?"
I nodded.
"How'd he make his money?"
I smiled. "Undergarments."
"Huh?"
"Knight Apparel. Jerry was the founder and CEO. They made bras and girdles."
"Ah. The meat-packing business."
I laughed. "Not bad."
"My grandmother gets credit for that one."
"Really?"
"Back when I was growing up, my Bobba Ann worked in women's lingerie at the Bamberger's in Newark. She told people she was in the meat-packing department."
Benny took a big bite of his second burrito and chewed thoughtfully. "Knight Apparel? In St. Louis?"
"Actually, out in Sullivan. Set it up out there to avoid the unions. Hanes acquired it about fifteen years ago. Jerry Knight took the money and invested some of it in real estate."
"Such as that apartment complex."
"Exactly."
"And bought himself a trophy wife."
"So it seems."
"What about the ex-wife? Katie's mom. You like her?"
"She's okay." I took a sip of iced tea and shook my head. "She's scared. That property is her sole source of income. If she loses it, she loses everything. Including her own apartment, which is in the building."
He took another bite of the burrito and washed it down with a big gulp of soda. "You've seen the deed?"
I nodded.
"Is she fucked?"
I shrugged. "I've got to do some legal research first."
"That doesn't sound good."
I sighed. "We'll see."
Benny finished off the second burrito and unwrapped the third.
"So," I said, "you must be going on TV soon."
He gave me a surprised look. "How'd you know?"
"Your hair, boychik."
Benny and I were coaching my son Sam's kindergarten soccer team that fall. When I'd last seen Benny, at our game on Sunday afternoon, his shaggy Jew-fro had reached epic Jimi Hendrix proportions, but now it was neatly trimmed.
Benny sighed. "Fucking hair wussies at CNN."
"When?"
"A week from Wednesday. I'm on some panel for the bizarrely named Wolf Blitzer. We're going to talk about a trade regulation proposal in Congress that's giving the Silicon Valley boys irritable bowel syndrome."
"A week from Wednesday? Cool. I'll let Mom know. She's your biggest fan."
"And I'm hers. Sarah Gold is awesome."
Benny took another bite of the burrito.
Despite his national reputation in the field of antitrust law, Professor Benjamin Goldberg remains my beloved Benny. He's vulgar, he's fat, and he's gluttonous, but he's also ferociously loyal and wonderfully hilarious and my best friend in the whole world. I love him like the brother I never had. After a few years at Abbott & Windsor, we both escaped that LaSalle Street sweatshop — Benny to teach law at De Paul, me to go solo as Rachel Gold, Attorney at Law. Different reasons brought us to St. Louis. For me, it was a desire to live closer to my mother after my father died. For Benny, it was an offer he couldn't refuse from the Washington University School of Law.
Benny said, "Tell her I'll be wearing that tie she gave me for Hanukkah."
"She'll be in heaven. So will Sam. We'll be watching." I took out my iPhone and opened the calendar. "A week from next Wednesday. Got it. Oh, and you're down for dinner the following night, too. You're still coming, right?"
"You kidding? I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Mom's making her homemade kishka for you."
"Damn, woman, I'm getting a woodie just thinking about it."
"I'll be sure to not let her know that."
He gave me a wink and took a big bite out of the burrito.
CHAPTER 3RAP. The Rule Against Perpetuities.
You first hear of it in your Property class as a One L. You try to master it in your bar review course after graduation. You forget it after you sit for the bar exam. And if you're like most lawyers, you never think of it again. Ever.
I used to be one of those lawyers.
Until my meeting with Marsha Knight.
The Rule Against Perpetuities.
It was created centuries ago by the courts of England. Its purpose: to restrain the mortmain, which is Latin for the "dead hand." Specifically, the Rule was designed to prevent situations where the transfer of property was restricted by the hand of someone who'd been dead for decades, or even centuries. A common practice in feudal England was to put land in trust in perpetuity, with each succeeding generation living off the land without actually owning it. Why? To avoid the taxes that would be levied when the land was transferred upon the death of the owner. A perpetual trust avoided that tax. The courts created the Rule to close that loophole.
Though its roots and its original purpose were distinctly British, the Rule had crossed the Atlantic by the time of the Revolution and eventually took hold in all of the states. Turns out that the rich in the United States were just as eager as their British counterparts to control their wealth — and thus their descendants — from beyond the grave.
The Dead Hand.
The Rule Against Perpetuities can be stated in one seemingly simple sentence: "No interest in property is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after the death of some life in being at the creation of the interest." Under the Rule, the phrase "life in being" means a specified person who was alive at the time of the grant.
Sounds straightforward, albeit a little opaque.
The problem is that the Rule deals with unknown future events. It asks whether there is a possibility, no matter how remote, that the interest will not vest before expiration of that twenty-one-year period. If so, the grant fails entirely. As a result, any attempt to apply the Rule leads you down a rabbit hole of what-ifs and hypotheticals. One silly example — a favorite of law school professors — is the so-called Case of the Unborn Widow. Here's how it goes:
Our grantor leaves the property to "Jack for life, then to Jack's widow, if any, for life, and then to Jack's children." Sounds simple, eh? Brace yourself. Let's suppose Jack was married to Jill but had no children at the time of that grant. This would mean that Jack and Jill were the only Lives in Being at the time of that grant. Now let's consider one of the hypotheticals required by the Rule. If, say, Jack and Jill divorced (or Jill died) and then Jack remarried a much younger woman who was born after the date of that grant, then Jack's new wife would not be a Life in Being. As such, she could outlive Jack by more than twenty-one years. If so, the transfer to Jack's children after her death would be outside the twenty-one-year measuring period, thereby violating the Rule Against Perpetuities.
Confusing?
Agreed.
Fortunately — or, actually, unfortunately — the violation of the Rule Against Perpetuities in the case of Danielle A. Knight v. Marsha B. Knight was subtle but not quite as obscure as in the law school hypotheticals. It involved the grant of a succession of various interests in the Fontainebleau Estates, a luxury high-rise apartment complex in Clayton, the fashionable suburb of St. Louis. The apartment complex generated about a half-million dollars in profits a year.
Under the property deed at issue — which was dated about two months before the entry of the divorce decree in In re the Marriage of Jerome R. Knight and Marsha B. Knight — the Fontainebleau LLC, a limited-liability company owned by Jerry Knight, was to transfer the apartment complex to Jerry Knight not less than one week prior to entry of the divorce decree. Jerry was to hold the property as a life estate until one year after the divorce decree became a final judgment, at which point the property was to vest in Marsha Knight as a life estate but subject to forfeiture if she ever sought to modify any aspect of the divorce decree. Upon her death or forfeiture, the property was to be held jointly by the descendants of any child fathered by Jerry Knight after entry of the divorce decree.
In other words, you didn't need an advanced degree in property law to see that there were some RAP issues with that deed. For example, one hypothetical that arguably violated the twenty-one-year limit was the one that vested a life estate in Marsha Knight "one year after the divorce decree became a final judgment," since the divorce decree might never become a final judgment. The divorce decree did become a final judgment, of course, but the quirkiness of the Rule Against Perpetuities, which had been modified in other states to include a wait-and-see provision, remained in full force in Missouri.
In short, as I said to myself as I closed the Westlaw link on my office computer, Marsha Knight had a problem.
A big problem.
CHAPTER 4The Cross Family Law Firm is one of the preeminent divorce firms in St. Louis, and its reception area sets its vibe and target demographic. The magazines fanned out on the coffee tables include Vogue, Ms., and Womens Health. The framed movie posters feature Erin Brockovich, Catwoman, and Kill Bill: Vol. 2. And then there is the Norma Cross "Wall of Frames," which features photographs of Norma posing with a variety of powerful women, including Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep, and Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee. In short, this was a divorce firm that represented women.
Norma Cross was on the shortlist of the unhappy wives of most of the rich men in St. Louis. Many of those husbands had discovered — or would soon discover — that Norma was a most painful Cross to bear. Norma Cross was also one of the more loathed members of the family practice bar — a noteworthy distinction in a field large with competition for that title. In representing her worshipful clients, Norma's arsenal included fierce aggression and brazen dishonesty. One of her longtime opponents told me that he refused to even have a telephone conference with her unless he could record it.
On the wall near the door was a framed color photograph of the late Adam Fox, Marsha Knight's lawyer in her divorce. Fox was a handsome man with sandy hair, blue eyes, a cleft chin, and a beguiling smile. The brass plaque read:
Adam Fox In our Hearts and Memories Forever
Beneath that inscription were the years of his birth and death. I did the math. He'd died at the age of 34.
"Miss Gold?"
I looked over to the receptionist. "Yes?"
"Miss Cross will see you now. Joyce will take you to her."
The receptionist gestured toward the inner doorway, where a stern, gray-haired woman in a brown checked pantsuit stood waiting.
She gave me a sour look. "Follow me."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Dead Hand by Michael A. Kahn. Copyright © 2016 Michael A. Kahn. Excerpted by permission of Poisoned Pen Press.
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