The Misfortune Of Meeting Lawyers: A part of Azazel’s story

Family drama (the kind of stuff the 90% of lawyers have wet dreams about) happened like it does for many. With their mother mentally ill, one daughter, Abigail*, saw this as a fabulous opportunity to get rich quickly. (*Names are changed).

As their mother's health declined, Abigail took control of her mother's life and assets, force-feeding her anti-depressants and anti-psychotic drugs to control her, while grasping and grabbing every possible thing down to the last teaspoon, going so far as to fraudulently sell her mother's house and push her into a facility where she could be kept drugged and confused, preventing her from interfering with Abigail's carefully laid plans. And mother needed an inordinate amount of money for her care, money that would reduce Abigail's takings by more than she was willing to forego to keep up her life of luxury.

Azazel*, the other sister, was the only hindrance, but using filthy dirty tricks, Abigail was able to neutralize her by causing immense pain and devastation, gaslighting her to look like the perpetrator. Or so she thought, but her lies were eventually exposed. But this came at great personal cost to Azazel.

Bad Experiences With Lawyers

A lawyer entered the mess to launch a court application to put official control- a ticket to stealing the entire family wealth, in Abigail's hands, rubbing his hands in glee. The lawyer, Jacob* colluded with Abigail to sell the house (extra fees to transfer the property, yay!) while mother was still alive, but then Azazel interfered with their court application, so they lied to the court, saying there was a prospective buyer, and hid the sale agreement that had been signed months earlier, despite that the buyer had already paid the purchase price to Jacob, who put it on an interest bearing account and immediately opened a slush fund to cover his costs by using the interest that belonged to the buyer, realizing that Abigail wasn’t going to pay her way.

They convinced themselves that Azazel could be bullied into submission, and illegally gave the buyer the keys to their mother's house, on condition that the buyer paid rent to swell their slush funds. But Azazel wasn't quite completely destroyed yet, so Abigail and Jacob took their lies back to court after mother died, preferring the lure of the massive fees of court action and the satisfaction of beating Azazel down and destroying her, as though this would somehow validate Abigail being deserving of all the family assets. Greed is always an ugly thing.

Are Lawyers All Bullies, Locked In Schoolyard Bully Mode Or Are They Driven By Their Own Issues?

A court action to declare any one of mothers dozen or so purported wills she supposedly signed after being found by doctors to be lacking in mental capacity was launched, with no reference to the doctors or control drugs, just a vicious conglomeration of lies about what a terrible person Azazel is. (Did I mention Abigail is an expert gaslighter with psychopathic tendencies?) The combination of lies and arrogance didn’t work. Despite acting in person, Azazel won the court case, they lost, badly.

But it didn't end there, mainly because around US$ 25,000 or more that Abigail (a serial avoider of taking responsibility for her vindictive actions throughout her life) was supposed to pay had been expropriated into the bank account of Jacob from the interest slush fund. They were in a corner, but it was a lucrative one, and lies and deceit had gotten them this far, why stop there?

Jacob had a friend, the fellow cesspool-dwelling lawyer, Loki*, who was keen to get his hands on a slice of the slush fund. Secret meetings were held. Dirty little backroom deals made Loki the face of the group, under the pretense of acting in the interests of the buyer who, five years later, was still living illegally in their mother's house, using electricity and consumables at the expense of the dead mother. Despite being told by Azazel years earlier that the deal was fraudulent, it was a sweet deal to live for free, so she clung on. Birds of a feather it seems, really do stick together.

Loki tried- very hard, to convince Azazel to fold, and when the smarmy charm didn't work, he too reverted to the same bullying tactics that hadn't worked for Jacob. But the lies and devious plots did work on a lawyer appointed as the executor of their mother's estate. Sharing the same values as Jacob and Loki, an underhand deal was made, opening the path for the executor to grab her slice of the estate pie. At Azazels insistence, she was dishonorably discharged of her duties but left the estate in a worse position, yet still managed to take money from the estate's bank account for herself and her partner, without justification.

At first glance, the new executor seemed to be one of the 10%, but she too fell under the spell of Abigail and took Loki's route of trying to gain Azazels trust to force a deal that would see Azazel paying Abigail's legal costs for the court case woven with lies about her that she won. It's bizarre, but truth is always stranger than fiction.

As things stand, Abigail, Jacob, and Loki continue to siphon off the interest money and the buyer still gets "free" services. Azazel is still fighting, but she's much, much stronger, and a little wiser. She recognizes that Abigail is the problem, but she also recognizes that without the devious, dishonest, greedy lawyers, the destruction of her life would not have been possible. The pain could have been avoided, but perhaps there was meaning in that pain.

Finding different ways to heal became a quest, and the quest itself gave her life meaning. More importantly, she realized one day that, while she loved her previous life and the people in it that she lost, building a new life was an exciting prospect, and she could now shape that life to resonate with her soul.

(More of Azazels story will follow, this is just one small chapter in her journey)

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NOTE: In case you were wondering, no, I don’t hate lawyers (or anyone else, hate is a worthless thing). My father was a lawyer, a man I deeply loved, respected, and admired. A very human man of inherent integrity and goodness, during his lifetime he upheld stringent professional and ethical standards, those standards by which lawyers should be measured because it is the reason why lawyers, as pillars in the legal system, have the privilege of being respected and trusted (Making Abigail's actions all the more incomprehensible- she knows better).

Yet as some lawyers stand on the shoulders of giants like my dad, they stomp the legacy of these giants into the ground with their antics that don't belong in a free society, much less in what was once regarded as a profession, but has degenerated into a seedy, money-obsessed industry.

I have been fortunate enough to encounter others like my father, but they are few and far between. It is a mystery to me why they risk being tainted by retaining an association with people whose values are so far removed from theirs, but I'm grateful that they remain committed to serving justice. No fees are too high to compensate those people for the difference they make in the lives of others, but unfortunately, the cesspool dwellers will always be lurking around to reach out and grasp those rewards. It's truly tragic.