How should the Judge rule?

[Dinsdale]

Pulling your plays straight out of the tard handbook eh?

FTFY

Fucking TEARS, Jerry.


It would take several blows to a Kansas Citian's head to make them this lame.

[BSmack]

What next B, spelling & grammar smack?

What? And risk being bored to tears by Dinsdale?

No thanks.

[ucantdoitdoggieSTyle2]

Pulling your plays straight out of the tard handbook eh?

It's always nice to see people using the very same lexicon I coined when I had their posting style in mind. Granted, I first dropped the term in regards to SD and KC fan... but still. You're forbidden from using those two words contiguously in a sentence. Sorry.

[The Whistle Is Screaming]

Looks like Crapchester is making a push on KC for the premier mongoloid infested shithole in the US.

I know it looks bad, but it isn't that bad.

[BSmack]

Pulling your plays straight out of the tard handbook eh?

It's always nice to see people using the very same lexicon I coined when I had their posting style in mind. Granted, I first dropped the term in regards to SD and KC fan... but still. You're forbidden from using those two words contiguously in a sentence. Sorry.

Sorry, but you didn't invent the term "tard handbook" any more than Al Gore invented these here Interwebs. I've seen and used that term long before I ever saw your nic around these parts.

[BSmack]

In a perfect world, that sperm donor wouldn't be recognized as an heir.

That would have been accomplished very easily with a simple drafting of a will.

[RumpleForeskin]

That would have been accomplished very easily with a simple drafting of a will.

Yeah, 'cus I'm pretty sure a majority of the people that fit in the demographic of single, 30, and no children usually draft a will at their age. Idiot.

[BSmack]

That would have been accomplished very easily with a simple drafting of a will.

Yeah, 'cus I'm pretty sure a majority of the people that fit in the demographic of single, 30, and no children usually draft a will at their age. Idiot.

The idiots are the ones with no written statement of their last wishes on record. Especially if there is someone hanging around who is legally entitled to your estate that you don't want touching your estate. Maybe it's because I've already outlived my mother by 6 years, but it's simple common sense.

[Terry in Crapchester]

BTW: As far as I'm concerned, neither parent should get a fucking dime from the compensation fund. Caldwell had no dependents of any kind. Why should the parents profit in any way from this?

It depends on how you look at it. If the compensation fund is essentially the equivalent of the proceeds of a cause of action existing on behalf of the kid at the time of his death, then it properly is property of his estate. With no one else in line, legally, to collect from the estate, it goes to the parents.

Is the compensation fund to compensate for wrongful death or a survival action? Or both? Or does NY make such dinstinctions?

Wrongful death action = suit to recover damages for the pain and suffering of the surviving spouse, children, or other relatives if no spouse or children.

Survival action = suit to recover for the pain and suffering of the deceased, which may be brought by the surviving spouse, children, or other relatives if no spouse or children.

NY makes a distinction between wrongful death and survival actions. I don't know exactly how the wrongful death fund works. My best guess is that it is designed to cover both, particularly given the amount of money involved.

Having said that, I should amend my original answer slightly lest it be nitpicked (sup, you know who you are). The father won't get $1.45 million. That's for the simple reason that there will be expenses out of the estate which will reduce the total take below $2.9 million.

There will be attorneys fees. Around here, 4% is customary for an estate. By my calculations, that comes to $118,000, assuming no assets of the estate other than those mentioned in the article. And if mom is smart, she'll take an administrator's commission (if only to get a little more money than dad), which is also an expense of the estate. Based on this statutory scheme, those would be:

5% of first $100,000 = $5,000
4% of next $200,000 = $8,000
3% of next $700,000 = $21,000
2 1/2 % of next $1.9 million = $47,500

Total = $81,500.

Then you've also got funeral expenses, if any; court filing fees (capped at $1,250); and any creditors the son owed at the time of his death. There might also be estate tax consequences, given the size of the estate, if the victim's compensation fund is not exempt from estate tax provisions. Mom may also get a credit for expenses she incurs in probating the estate, particularly given that she lives in Philadelphia and the estate is in Brooklyn.

Of course, there's also the possibility of settlement here. While the law appears to be squarely on dad's side, public opinion is not. He may want to take a settlement of some amount that's less than half but greater than zero to avoid another raking over the coals by the Daily News. If the case settles, the parties could stipulate that the terms of settlement remain confidential. By contrast, a court's Decision and Decree are a matter of public record.

[OCmike]

Are you sure that the estate is responsible for any creditors that are owed money? A guy I knew in the Navy blew his own head off and SGLI Life Insurance still paid because his Mom was on SSI already, lived with him and would have been totally screwed without the $$. One stipulation the dead dude made was that he left a friend $45,000 to take care of his debts, because he knew that dude was a responsible guy would wouldn't just take the money and run. When dude went to pay the bills, he was told that all they needed was a copy of the death certificate and all was well and good. So the guy ended up $45,000 richer.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Some debts are automatically discharged by operation of law upon death. Student loans are a good example of that. Otherwise, if an estate has sufficient assets, at least in New York it can be responsible for the dead person's debts. Creditors are not all treated equally, though. Court filing fees are paid first; then estate taxes, if any; then attorneys' fees and executors'/administrators' commissions; then funeral expenses and medical expenses relating to the dead person's final illness. Only then are ordinary debts the dead person racked up while alive paid, although those are entitled to be paid before any heir receives a distribution. Secured debts, such as a mortgage on a house or a properly filed lien on a car, are in better position than unsecured debts such as credit cards, of course.

I don't know exactly what happened in the case of your friend. Different laws may have come into play, perhaps. It's also possible that the creditors were afraid that if it went into court, and the guy holding the money had claimed that dead dude made a gift to him while alive, they were fucked.

[PSUFAN]

It would take several blows to a Kansas Citian's head to make them this lame.

Good luck getting a clean shot in. Even the voluminous fat that encases their jaws is adept with the IKYABWAI.

several blows

OOOHHHH...IN!!

--lk_trick

[OCmike]

Some debts are automatically discharged by operation of law upon death. Student loans are a good example of that. Otherwise, if an estate has sufficient assets, at least in New York it can be responsible for the dead person's debts. Creditors are not all treated equally, though. Court filing fees are paid first; then estate taxes, if any; then attorneys' fees and executors'/administrators' commissions; then funeral expenses and medical expenses relating to the dead person's final illness. Only then are ordinary debts the dead person racked up while alive paid, although those are entitled to be paid before any heir receives a distribution. Secured debts, such as a mortgage on a house or a properly filed lien on a car, are in better position than unsecured debts such as credit cards, of course.

I don't know exactly what happened in the case of your friend. Different laws may have come into play, perhaps. It's also possible that the creditors were afraid that if it went into court, and the guy holding the money had claimed that dead dude made a gift to him while alive, they were fucked.

Thanks for the info. It was a bit of a surprise to me that none of the debts were considered payable either. In this case, the suicide note was treated as the will, as it stated what he wanted done with all of his crap (including who he wanted his life insurance to go to). It was in the note that he specifically stated that he was giving the friend (one of my roommates) the money purely to pay off debt. Not sure why that didn't happen, as dude contacted the dead guy's creditors and was told the same thing by each (essentially "If he's dead, you can keep it").

[XXXL]

The decedent passed intestate from the information stated in the article. In my jurisdiction, we look for a surviving spouse and/or issue to determine the distribution scheme. Neither class exist in this matter. That requires a search for surviving parents, and with these facts, mom and dad take equally.

The decedent's mother has her arguments, and the decedent's dad has his side of the story where he claims to have been shut out by the surviving mother.

From my point of view, dad should take his half. It's only money.

I get this stuff all the time, people go through life without a plan as to where their estate goes, and when they go, the heirs make out or get screwed.......

[Terry in Crapchester]

Interesting update from 88, although it seems to me that the abandonment argument may be stretching the law just a tad, in the absence of any formal legal termination or voluntary surrender of the father's parental rights. But if there are any child support payments remaining due, the mother can probably recoup those from the father's share.

And while I agree with BSmack that a will (which presumably would have disinherited his father) probably would have solved this matter, we have to take a look at the kid's position. He was single and had no children. In all likelihood, on 9/10/01 he didn't have a pot to piss in. And while he was presumably intelligent enough to have contemplated his own mortality, I doubt he thought he'd die in such a horrific manner, and a manner which would entitle his estate to significant compensation. For that matter, he probably didn't think his parents would outlive him. Heck, for all we know, he might not have even known that his father was still alive. Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but it's hard to fault the kid for not having a will under those circumstances.

I agree with XXXL that many heirs feel they got screwed. In fact, I'd go one step farther than that and say that in the majority of cases I've seen, someone, if not everyone, feels they got screwed regardless of how the estate is distributed. The cases where all heirs are on the same page, and there's no bitterness between them, are the exceptions, not the rule.