The Gordon family is having some trouble. In 1987, when Texas feels the recession badly. The source of the family fortune, a 5,000-acre farm, is barely profitable and real estate values have plummeted.
The three Gordon siblings, who haven’t worked a day in their lives, are squabbling about when and how the family assets should be divided. Their elderly mother, Stella, who controls the family wealth, insists there will be no division while she lives, and that the estate will remain intact after her death.
Dividing the Estate, Horton Foote’s comic drama about the dispute, premiered in 1989. But it’s as fresh today as it was then, said William Hayes, producing artistic director of Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, where the play opens today.
Many of his donors are embroiled in similar situations.
“I’m disturbed about the number of families and siblings who are divided over money and will issues,” said Hayes, who directs the production. “Many children have a strong sense of entitlement to their parents’ money. Some are disputing over their parents’ wills when their parents are still alive.”
Family disputes over inheritance are nothing new in Palm Beach. For example, when frequent visitor Brooke Astor died in 2007, leaving behind a $100 million estate, a battle broke out between her grandson, Philip Marshall, and his father, Anthony Marshall, who Philip accused of defrauding Astor in her declining years. Anthony Marshall was found guilty of a number of fraud and conspiracy charges, as well as first-degree grand larceny. The case is under appeal.
The four sons of Fred Koch, co-founder of energy conglomerate Koch Industries, spent nearly 20 years feuding about whether two brothers, Charles and David, defrauded the other two, William and Frederick, and other stockholders out of more than $2 billion when they sold their shares of Koch Industries in 1983. The brothers settled in 2001.
“Unfortunately, it happens a lot,” said estate-planning attorney Danielle Mayoras, author with her husband, Andy, of Trial & Heirs: Famous Fortune Fights! “That’s what inspired us to write the book. It happens whether you’re a multi-millionaire or have a modest estate. All the emotions siblings had while growing up, their feelings about second-marriage situations — everything boils to the surface when someone passes away.”
Foote wrote many plays about small-town Texans, as well as Academy Award-winning screenplays for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies.
The Gordon family’s “easygoing complacency — a firm confidence in their inherited right to all the good things in life and their fundamental lack of interest in the ultimate costs of their comfort, long borne by others — they look awfully familiar.” said The New York Times in its review of the 2007 off-Broadway production.
Hayes agrees. “There’s an increasing sense of entitlement and too much emphasis on money,” he said. “It’s particularly an issue in our own county.”
In Dividing the Estate, Stella lives in the past and can’t even keep the details of her own relatives’ lives straight. Her self-absorbed daughter, Mary Jo, and her alcoholic playboy son, Lewis, have been siphoning money off the Gordon estate for years. Their sister, Lucille, is clueless. Only Lucille’s son, who runs the family farm, and his socially conscious fiancée Pauline have any awareness of the outside world.
Less selfishness and better estate planning might have mitigated the Gordons’ distress. Instead, they seem likely to follow the path of many people the Mayorases meet during their speaking engagements around the country. “Everywhere I go, people who have had strong estate battles years ago still carry the scars,” Mayoras said.
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