This story began with the passing of my Mother; my own family has experienced many of the injustices and misfortune created by improper estate planning and administration. These include improper will documents, lack of control of will documents, failure to create a trust and proper maintenance of the trust, failure to preserve assets, improper professional advice failure to plan for transition, failure to have a living will and secrecy of testamentary plans. Combine these problems with the anger and greed of one family member, our brother, Russell Buchan, and we have a case study for the necessity of proper estate planning.

 I hope I may help other families by documenting what has occurred in my own family.

This is a recap of what originally appeared on the first chronicle, Fairness For Families.

My brother, Russell Buchan is shown gaily enjoying a lobster feast among friends. Russell is the owner of a national mail order grill parts business. Also he is a gourmet cook, a restaurant reviewer, and an author of books about Florida eating establishments.

On the evening Russell and I stopped at a Shoney’s in St Petersburg for a late night snack, his mood was not as joyful, the food not as festive. We arrived in separate cars having just left visiting our mother in a nursing home. Mom had been removed from life support that included a feeding tube to her stomach. The decision to remove life support was made after Russell had called my home in North Florida advising me Mom’s health had turned progressively worse and operative procedures would be required to prolong her life.

Our mother was eighty five.  Russell said he was told it was not recommended to perform the required extensive surgical procedures. Mother has been placed on a feeding tube the prior year. Initially, now that the feeding tube had been removed, Russell told me that medical personnel had advised him our mother would pass away in 48 to 72 hours. I traveled from my home to be at my mother’s death bed. That was a week ago.

As we shared a cup of coffee, I soon realized Russell’s torment was not because of my mother’s condition. It was fear his masterful plan to take total control of our mother’s estate might be foiled. He feared that his years of planning and manipulation, perhaps he had left a stone unturned.

My mother’s estate would be valued at $ 3,500.000. This value was established when our father had passed away nine years prior and all of his assets were held jointly and upon his death all of his estate passed to our mother. Russell now wanted it all.

Russell said the Doctors told him our mother could pass that weekend. There was a look of fear on my brother’s face. It was if he had planned the perfect murder and just before pulling the trigger, everything flashed before him. He was not sure that every alibi, every detail would be properly executed. Although I felt that Russell had spent 14 years planning what was about to happen, that evening he looked like he feared he could fail. 

We sat and talked in Shoney’s for what may have been two hours or more. Shoney’s closed at midnight and the staff was cleaning up around us. At about 1:00 AM the manager asked us if we leave so he could lock the doors.

Russell had said many things that evening that put many of his past activities into perspective. When I left the restaurant with Russell and we both left in our own cars I drove across the street to the Ramada Inn parking lot and began writing notes of what had transpired that evening. I wrote for more than an hour.

As this chronicle is written, I will refer to these notes many times. I am writing this chronicle in hopes of helping other families avoid the calamity our family has faced. This is a story of how one family member sought to destroy a family unit and take all the assets for his own benefit. In the process he will reduce a three and one half million dollar estate to rubble because of his greed, avarice, jealousy, envy and revenge.

As I first produced this chronicle, I published it on a website, fairness for families to let people aware of the maladies in probate planning. Two and half years later after visiting with the parents of Terri Schiavo I became aware that more than greed was involved in the death of my mother.