So I haven’t had a diary entry in a while. I need to unload some stuff. This entry is going to be about lawsuits… I’ve had many of them in my life. The biggest one was the 9-yr battle against my father’s former wife for the estate that my father left me. Three days after my father died, my step-monster had filed a contentment to my father’s will in regards to marital assets being improperly distributed by the will. She was also pushing for a cremation, and I was appalled at the thought. My father had been baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic, not that she gave a fuck. I thought it would be honoring his roots — my grandmother especially — to have him interred with a full Catholic burial.
She would hear none of it. So I filed an injunction to slow the process of the cremation, however I was overruled because law states the wife has final say in all dispositions of the remains of her husband. The children get no say. That’s Florida for you. At the end of the day, the judge did take pity on me and she agreed to splitting my father’s ashes in half, so that I could do as I pleased with it. *shakes head* HORRIFIED isn’t even the proper word. I did take what ashes I had and three months after his death, I did my best to honor the lineage that I, and my father, was brought up in. I asked a priest from St. Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church to come and give my father his last rites and say the prayers and hymns that I was so accustomed to. Now my father was not a practicing Catholic, but none the less I still felt and knew he held God in his heart, no matter what anyone believes. I saw that man pray. I didn’t do this for my father, per say, I did it more for my grandmother Mercedes (my father’s mother) and all that she believed in and taught me to believe in.
What ensued after she announced that she would be having a viewing at Fred Hunters and then a Methodist service (at her church) is nothing short of unbelievable. She wanted half of my father’s business… a business even my father felt had been started by my mother and him, that I felt Darlene had nothing to do with. She was a pianist, at a church and sometimes in concerts — what did she know of the business my dad had started or ran. Not that I knew better, but still my father had explicitly left that business in its entirety to me; 100%. She contested that, stating that it was marital property. See my father in 1992, had changed the name of the business and to not assume any liability from that previous business he essentially shut it down and re-opened it. In 1992, he was married to Darlene. The previous company had been at one point named 50/50 split with my mother and father, however post divorce that had changed. My mother didn’t really want anything to do with that business, however she trusted that my father would use that business to care for his children. Darlene used the Florida laws under communal property to suit me.
For 9 years I battled hand-to-hand with this woman over the principle that my father had wanted me, and only me, to see any profitable gains from this company. My father did not leave this woman destitute; there was insurance money and cash on hand and the house they lived in, cars they owned, etc. etc. There was no other reason for her to discredit my father in the manner that she did other than spite. She even went as far as to say that my father was not of sound mind when the will was written, and at one point that Ricardo or Carlos had forged my father’s signature. It got really ugly. Appeal after appeal, I fought… then lost. Then appealed again. For me it wasn’t anything other than the principle that I was fighting for — the principle that my father’s wishes were written in stone, that they should be carried out and respected — the principle that this company was something my mother helped built through 32 years of marriage — the principle that she had slandered my father’s name so why should she enjoy anything that came of him.
And I won, probate laws and corporate laws were changed to protect the deceased. A spouse must prove that a company was indeed started within the capacity that would be deemed communal property. If a company had a historical record, such as my father’s did, that company would be legally started on the day that the historical record indicates, barring any name changes that require the “rebirth” of a company. Period. I got what my father had wanted me to get, 100%. By the time it was all said and done though, obviously 9 years, there was nothing left really of the company besides some hard property — furniture, computers, etc. Most of its real property had been sold off the years prior by the probate courts.
I will say this.
That fight; it kept me going. Which was both a good and bad thing. The good part of it was that I had a focus, a purpose, and when you loose everything that’s what’s going to keep you digging out of your hole. The bad part of it was that that focus kept me from properly grieving for my father for many years. All that suppressed grief would later come back to bite me in the ass.
And it brings me to today.
In the last few years, I have been fighting to clear Lucas’ name for him. Because I feel no matter what no one should be suing a dead person that lost their life the way that Luke did. Like Luke was disoriented and severely hurt from the impact of that first accident when he stumbled onto northbound traffic. The guy that hit him, severed him, and killed him hit him by chance, and I’ll be damned if I let Luke’s death by his lottery ticket. But once again I am dealing with Florida laws. Seems that I am always challenged when it comes to Florida. I can’t really speak too much on this case as its on going.
I will say this.
Its another fight, and that fight is emotional, gut wrenching, stressful beyond belief, and utterly exhausting. Much more so than the one previous. The connection I had to Luke for the majority of my known life was deeper than the connection I had to a company. For me this fight is about my Lukey’s good name, and I will fight until I am DEAD for that. My Lukey was just 2 days shy of his 37th birthday, he was coming home to celebrate that birthday with me. For us to do what we had always done, play games, laugh, and love each other. Luke was an amazing person, a loving man, and my ride or die. He wouldn’t hesitate for a second to fight for me and did on many occasions in my life like sitting with me through the legal battle I described above — all TWENTY TWO YEARS we shared together. So I’ll fight on, fight until I die. No matter how many tears run down my face, or how stressful this gets, I’ll fight tooth and nail.
So go on and try me, put me on the witness stand. I doubt a jury of Luke’s peers would ever in a million years side with money-hungry opportunists who actually walked away from this tragic accident; shaken yes, but LIVING. Put blame where blame is due, on DART Trucking for extending their driver past the federal lawfully required time allotted for drivers, causing fatigue and loss of judgment. You do not go after a dead man’s family. YOU CANNOT GET BLOOD FROM STONE!