From Alternet, the story of a real-live gay cowboy who was unceremoniously booted off the farm he shared with his partner for a quarter century:
The documentary film “Tying the Knot” chronicles the five-year legal battle Beaumont waged to keep the Bristow, Okla., ranch that he and partner Earl Meadows shared for 24 years. When Meadows died in 2000, a gaggle of his long-lost cousins went to court and evicted Beaumont from the 80-acre ranch, taking at once his home and livelihood. Despite Meadows’ notarized will, which left his estate to Beaumont, and what Beaumont calls the couple’s “marriage,” Oklahoma courts bestowed the estate to the Meadows family.
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“Screwed” is right.
I would be so very pleased to see Karma kick these asshole cousins in the rear. Repeatedly.
Fucking thieves. And the damn judge—all of them ought to be ashamed of themselves. How can anyone put a bureaucratic technicality over a person’s stated wishes? All those cousins—and I use the term loosely because real familes don’t do that to each other—profitting from deliberatly ignoring and challenging and interfering with their cousin’s wishes, hurting someone he loved—they don’t deserve a penny.
We went through something like this in our family, my mother’s will was handwritten and was invalidated by the probate court due to the fact that she had left out the verbiage that would empower the executor to pay any debts. And then all Hell broke loose as everyone had a different interpretation of what her intentions were. And funny thing, no matter who you talked to, their version of intentions just happened to benefit them personally. Funny, that. Human nature is a bitch sometimes.
Best prevention to this is to have an airtight will. Because even if your family knows what your intentions were, some of them will conveniently forget that they knew in favor of getting a windfall themselves.
God, this state makes me weary. For every great thing about it–the University of Tulsa, the (public) kindness and courtesy, the beautiful land–there are a dozen instances of bigotry and stupidity. We’re having a pretty significant youth exodus right now because of crap like this. I hope to join it soon.
That’s what I don’t get. It was a legal document, right? It was clear in intention, right? So what the fuck gives anybody the right to invalidate it? I’d really like to know.
You know, I’d wager dollars to doughnoughts the judge that decided this case thinks taxes are and unwarrented infringement on a person’s right to dispose of their property as they see fit.
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