I don't remember there being a lease, although it had nothing to do with us. MIL and FIL had made an agreement with Brother Twin six months after he left the employ of the farm, having worked for six months and never once earning his salary. This was a few months before the partnership papers were drawn up.
There was finally a showdown in which my husband told his father he would have to choose which son he wanted to work with. This was following a pattern on the part of BIL of threats, intimidation, not showing up until late and leaving early, taking off weekends (on a dairy farm,) whining and begging. My husband said he would no longer "work" with his brother because it was not worth his time.
After the recriminations were over, and the gauntlet laid down, FIL turned to my husband and said, "Let's go to work." He obviously knew who would actually do the work. But of course it was always my husband's fault for throwing his brother out.
Brother Twin had a string of jobs after that, non-high-school diploma-requiring jobs mostly milking the cows for other dairies, and when he was invariably fired, his entire family always blamed my husband. He finally ended up coming back to work for a landscape outfit, and then eventually went to work for a family-own dairy construction company as a foreman. He was valued by his boss, although the Mexican workers under him considered him lazy. The bottom fell out of the dairy construction business, everyone else was laid off, and Brother-in-law's wages were cut in half while he was working twice the hours he had been. BIL's wife would not share her professional income with any of her family, although she had paid for the replacement manufactured home on the hill with her inheritance when her father passed away.
I asked BIL if I could see a copy of the lease he had in his car (we had stopped to chat on the ditch road up to their trailer) but he wouldn't. So I wrote to the attorneys and they sent me one. MIL and FIL gave them a 50-year-lease at $1 annual rent (only paid for the first few years), including a clause that they could own it outright if the laws of the county ever changed in the future. (The laws did change; they tightened up even further.) There was no right-of-way. FIL had tried two years before the lease became effective to deed the land to BIL, but since there was no legal right of way, it was not allowed. Besides the fact that there was no access to emergency equipment. My MIL, before she died, expressed several times that engineering that document was the worst mistake she had ever made.
There were three covenants, two of them having to do with keeping the place clean, and a third keeping up the fences. None of them kept. We sent reams of background information to the judge, but he refused to consider any of it. We showed him pictures of the trash everywhere (I got screamed at for taking those, let me tell you), the Google map, and telephotos from my back yard showing the broken fences. The judge said he would rule on the covenants alone and not from equitability (emotional testimony) and I thought, if that is so we will win on it.
But he lied. He ended up ruling opposite, for the emotional testimony given by the Father-in-law, who maintained his attempt to mediate his quarreling sons, his desire to treat them equally, the fact that he had told his younger son he could mess the place up as much as he wanted, and he'd never required him to clean it up. It was painful to listen to, after hearing them argue with each other for years about BIL's failure to clean the place up.
The judge admitted that BIL violated the covenants he had signed his name to, but that he wanted to leave the road open for further litigation, which he warned against, and admitted that he was affected by FIL's testimony allowing BIL to trash the property. The judge also said the lease was an attempt to give the land to the son in contravention of the land use laws of the state. BIL testified that it really wasn't that bad of a mess. I was glad he left the rest of his family home; I couldn't take the histrionics. As it was, the defense attorney badgered me unmercifully, but our attorney thought I was a good witness and let him.
So the liars won, all three of them. For what it has cost them. I have always hoped the ruling haunted the judge, who consigned a family to filth and illegality and an immoral, degraded life that he could have ended with one ruling. It has haunted BIL, who over the last three years has become more depressed, unhappy, grouchy and cynical. It has given FIL a stout, sturdy stick to beat us with and blame us with, ever, ever after. Even though, as we remind him, he won.
Interestingly, the defense attorney who badgered me and who is at heart a decent man, eventually dropped FIL and BIL as clients. This occurred when the attorney called me in behalf of FIL, who was sitting in his office, asking if I would open the books to him. (FIL eventually reneged on his promise to gift his remaining ownership in the partnership to our nephew, his grandson.) The attorney asked me several questions which he told me I did not have to answer. I answered him freely. I told him I had recently put together a financial history of the farm and was perfectly willing to open the books on one condition: that all the children were present and they would have copies of all the financial records at the same time.
I did not hear from him again. When FIL came home it was eventually relayed to us that his attorney had walked out of the room and left him sitting there, and not come back.
It was our own attorney who informed us that FIL and BIL had been dropped as clients, and furthermore, they were now shunned by all area attorneys. I believe this has to do with the fact that FIL too often refuses to acknowledge his own signature even when signed in the presence of a notary public. He might be able to make unfounded accusations to us that we forged his signature or that he hadn't known what he was signing, but it didn't work in front of his own attorney. I may be wrong in that, but I don't think so.
I could barely even stand to be around my father in law at all for the next year. It was a physical effort to be even in the same room with him. I wanted with all my heart to move far away from such people. I had never been face to face with such envy, such entitlement, such raw naked covetousness and such creepy dishonesty. FIL kept asking if we thought he lied on the stand, and we told him yes. He lied. He lied.
The only good thing that came out of it was that BIL's children finally found out the truth (that they didn't own the place and never would) and started acting a little more respectfully.
There was finally a showdown in which my husband told his father he would have to choose which son he wanted to work with. This was following a pattern on the part of BIL of threats, intimidation, not showing up until late and leaving early, taking off weekends (on a dairy farm,) whining and begging. My husband said he would no longer "work" with his brother because it was not worth his time.
After the recriminations were over, and the gauntlet laid down, FIL turned to my husband and said, "Let's go to work." He obviously knew who would actually do the work. But of course it was always my husband's fault for throwing his brother out.
Brother Twin had a string of jobs after that, non-high-school diploma-requiring jobs mostly milking the cows for other dairies, and when he was invariably fired, his entire family always blamed my husband. He finally ended up coming back to work for a landscape outfit, and then eventually went to work for a family-own dairy construction company as a foreman. He was valued by his boss, although the Mexican workers under him considered him lazy. The bottom fell out of the dairy construction business, everyone else was laid off, and Brother-in-law's wages were cut in half while he was working twice the hours he had been. BIL's wife would not share her professional income with any of her family, although she had paid for the replacement manufactured home on the hill with her inheritance when her father passed away.
I asked BIL if I could see a copy of the lease he had in his car (we had stopped to chat on the ditch road up to their trailer) but he wouldn't. So I wrote to the attorneys and they sent me one. MIL and FIL gave them a 50-year-lease at $1 annual rent (only paid for the first few years), including a clause that they could own it outright if the laws of the county ever changed in the future. (The laws did change; they tightened up even further.) There was no right-of-way. FIL had tried two years before the lease became effective to deed the land to BIL, but since there was no legal right of way, it was not allowed. Besides the fact that there was no access to emergency equipment. My MIL, before she died, expressed several times that engineering that document was the worst mistake she had ever made.
There were three covenants, two of them having to do with keeping the place clean, and a third keeping up the fences. None of them kept. We sent reams of background information to the judge, but he refused to consider any of it. We showed him pictures of the trash everywhere (I got screamed at for taking those, let me tell you), the Google map, and telephotos from my back yard showing the broken fences. The judge said he would rule on the covenants alone and not from equitability (emotional testimony) and I thought, if that is so we will win on it.
But he lied. He ended up ruling opposite, for the emotional testimony given by the Father-in-law, who maintained his attempt to mediate his quarreling sons, his desire to treat them equally, the fact that he had told his younger son he could mess the place up as much as he wanted, and he'd never required him to clean it up. It was painful to listen to, after hearing them argue with each other for years about BIL's failure to clean the place up.
The judge admitted that BIL violated the covenants he had signed his name to, but that he wanted to leave the road open for further litigation, which he warned against, and admitted that he was affected by FIL's testimony allowing BIL to trash the property. The judge also said the lease was an attempt to give the land to the son in contravention of the land use laws of the state. BIL testified that it really wasn't that bad of a mess. I was glad he left the rest of his family home; I couldn't take the histrionics. As it was, the defense attorney badgered me unmercifully, but our attorney thought I was a good witness and let him.
So the liars won, all three of them. For what it has cost them. I have always hoped the ruling haunted the judge, who consigned a family to filth and illegality and an immoral, degraded life that he could have ended with one ruling. It has haunted BIL, who over the last three years has become more depressed, unhappy, grouchy and cynical. It has given FIL a stout, sturdy stick to beat us with and blame us with, ever, ever after. Even though, as we remind him, he won.
Interestingly, the defense attorney who badgered me and who is at heart a decent man, eventually dropped FIL and BIL as clients. This occurred when the attorney called me in behalf of FIL, who was sitting in his office, asking if I would open the books to him. (FIL eventually reneged on his promise to gift his remaining ownership in the partnership to our nephew, his grandson.) The attorney asked me several questions which he told me I did not have to answer. I answered him freely. I told him I had recently put together a financial history of the farm and was perfectly willing to open the books on one condition: that all the children were present and they would have copies of all the financial records at the same time.
I did not hear from him again. When FIL came home it was eventually relayed to us that his attorney had walked out of the room and left him sitting there, and not come back.
It was our own attorney who informed us that FIL and BIL had been dropped as clients, and furthermore, they were now shunned by all area attorneys. I believe this has to do with the fact that FIL too often refuses to acknowledge his own signature even when signed in the presence of a notary public. He might be able to make unfounded accusations to us that we forged his signature or that he hadn't known what he was signing, but it didn't work in front of his own attorney. I may be wrong in that, but I don't think so.
I could barely even stand to be around my father in law at all for the next year. It was a physical effort to be even in the same room with him. I wanted with all my heart to move far away from such people. I had never been face to face with such envy, such entitlement, such raw naked covetousness and such creepy dishonesty. FIL kept asking if we thought he lied on the stand, and we told him yes. He lied. He lied.
The only good thing that came out of it was that BIL's children finally found out the truth (that they didn't own the place and never would) and started acting a little more respectfully.
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