The wheels of justice grind much like my teeth

I sit here waiting for a conference call from my attorney. My never seen before attorney. The one who took the case when my former attorney passed away suddenly about a year ago.

The case is a simple one. My mother was a legal secretary who worked from her boss for some 35 years as his "Della Street", his right hand. She continued to work part time for him even after they had both retired until her Alzheimer's appeared and caused her wonderful memory to disappear.

The attorney passed away in March of 2002, leaving her a stipend of $1000 per month in his Trust. Unfortunately, she was never informed of this. In fact, she wasn't even informed of his death. After my mother passed away in July of 2008, a chance encounter between my niece and the attorney's daughter in January of 2009 revealed the existence of this stipend. A call to me (I am the executor of my mother's estate) resulted in my contacting the CPA who was overseeing the Trust. He wanted to pay the owed money in $1000 per month installments. He claimed the real estate crunch had crippled the Trust and there wasn't enough in liquid assets to pay it out in a lump sum.

I contacted the first lawyer soon after. The CPA and his lawyer dragged their feet and stalled. My lawyer basically left it in the hands of his para-legals and allowed it to drag out until I went to the office and asked for the file. He took that as a sign I was unhappy and wanted to take the case to another lawyer. I was simply going to try to settle. On my own. Without a lawyer. All of a sudden, my lawyer went into action after promising that he would do so and after profuse apologies for the delays. He filed suit and served papers on the CPA. And a couple of months later, died of a massive heart attack. Thus, I ended up with another lawyer, one who took over most of the late attorney's cases. One suspects these cases were all deemed winnable and fairly simple.

Since then, there has been another year of delays. Another year in which getting information from my lawyer has been almost as difficult as getting information from the CPA.

What has been accomplished? Why, next to nothing. We do not know the actual health of the Trust, we do not have a court date, we still have delaying tactics, and I still have legal fees.

It's always seemed a simple case to me, a non-lawyer. It was called a simple case by both of my lawyers. But nothing is simple when it comes to attorneys, is it?

I have a T-shirt with a picture of the scales of justice on it and the following words on it:

"Talk is cheap... until you hire a lawyer."