Lawyers be banished

My wife (a medical doctor) has been in negotiations for over a year to purchase part of a practice from the estate of a fellow doctor. The probate court has been a nightmare for the family and trying to get them to approve the sale of the practice has been difficult. Basically, with medical practices, all that can be sold is the patient files and the good will from the prior doctor. The buyer hopes the current patients will continue to come to the new doctor. But if the sale is delayed, and the new doctor can't start seeing the new patients right away, they will go elsewhere. If your kid is sick, your not going to wait to see the doctor because the court hasn't approved the sale of the practice, if they can't see you someone else will. A thriving practice can become worthless in weeks or at the most months.

In my wife's case, she started seeing the patients as an independent contractor of the estate so the patient base was kept. But the court would still not sign off on the agreement. Well, the estate and my wife said we would go ahead with the sale and present it to the court as a done deal. The value for the practice has already been agreed upon as fair by the court and we wanted to just get the thing over with.

The estate had its attorney and I used my sister who is an attorney, but getting the agreement drafted was another pain. My sister would make a change and then the estate attorney would make a change etc. etc. etc. So last night the administrator for the estate and my wife and I got together and finalized the deal. We both went through the latest agreement, made a few changes and signed it, without the lawyers being present. Of course if the whole thing blows up, we may rue the day, but there should be enough protections in the agreement to keep all parties safe. Of course we have now paid for a practice that the court has not agreed to, although at this point we think it is a formality, but there is still a risk the court could invalidate the sale and the fun of getting the money returned.

Bottom line, if you plan on dying some day, have a will and estate plan setup to save your family much grief.

That's about it for today, thanks for coming.