To my teenage daughter,
When I was a boy, we played marbles all the time. Someone would draw a circular “pot” on the ground, and everyone would throw in five marbles. We took turns shooting them out of the circle with a special marble called a shooter. If you hit a marble out of the pot, and your shooter also came out, you won that marble, and could shoot again. If you missed, or the target marble didn’t come out, you lost your turn. But if the shooter “stuck” in the pot, you had to leave it there, and if someone else shot it out of the pot, you were out of the game. You took your shooter, and any marbles you had left, and went home. We called this, “playing for fun,” or “funzies,” because, even though you could lose your marbles, you kept your shooter.
We played funzies with little kids, because they couldn’t be expected to keep their shooters. But when only big kids were playing, we played “for keeps”. If your shooter stuck in the pot, you were still in the game, but anyone who could shoot it out of the pot could keep it. Losing a good shooter was a disaster. We also allowed “steelies” (steel ball bearings) to be used for shooters. Steelies are heavier than glass marbles, probably wouldn’t stick in the pot, and any marble they hit would almost always be knocked out. For a younger kid, playing for keeps against big boys with their steelies was a tremendous risk. But if you wanted to graduate from funzies, it was the only game in town. Eventually, when you got bigger, no one would play funzies with you any more. It was “keeps” or nothing.
Life is like that. When you are small, people protect you from making mistakes. As you get older, you are allowed more and more responsibility. In grade school, you are graded on your effort, not your performance. In junior high, performance counts, but nobody remembers your grades from year to year. In high school, grades “count”. They become part of your permanent record, and colleges use them for admissions. You are playing for keeps.
Sometimes, life thrusts you into a “keeps” game before you are ready. You can still lose your shooter, even if you cry and throw a trantrum. The big kids care more about winning marbles than fairness. Your only protection is to have a friend among the big kids who will stick up for you. But even if your friend is the biggest kid on the block, he can’t always protect you from your folly.
Without knowing it, daughter, you got into a life game of “keeps” when you were offered a cash settlement from my auto insurance company. They are the “big kids” who are only in it only for the "marbles:" They don’t care about you at all. I am not in the game, and can’t help you. Neither can your mom. Your only friend among the big kids in this particular game is your step-mom. Now you have offended her, and she doesn’t want to fight the biggest kid on the block for you. I can’t blame her, but it doesn’t matter. The only players are you, your step-mom, and the lawyers, and the stakes are a quarter of a million dollars. That's more money than I have made in my whole life, and the sharks smell blood.
My insurance company offered to settle out of court for $50,000. My lawyer says you could win five times that much by going to court. Technically, you would be suing me for causing you injuries, so I can’t help you, or even sign the papers. I would be suing myself, which is not allowed. You need a legal guardian (besides me) to take legal action for you. In court, the amount of hassle is equal to the amount of money at stake. Your step-mom was offering to fight the biggest kid on the block for a quarter-million bucks, and give it all to you. The law would not allow her to keep any of it; nor could you give it away to her, or to me. The laws are quite specific, to protect innocent kids from greedy parents. See why she’s so angry?
Most likely, here is what will happen to you, without her help: the court will appoint a special lawyer for you, called a “guardian ad litem.” That means they are your guardian only for this case. You will have to pay attorney’s fees out of whatever you win. You will not have a choice about who the guardian is, what the fees will be, or whether you even want a guardian ad litem. The guardian probably does not want to do the work entailed in a big settlement, as their fees are fixed by the court. A private attorney can charge much more, and win much more, but you are not old enough to hire one, your step-mom won’t now, and I’m out of the picture. You’re stuck. You've lost your shooter.
The guardian ad litem will probably settle with the insurance company out of court, but they may offer even less money, because they know the guardian won't fight as hard as a private attorney. Only the judge can make the guardian do his job right, and the judge is more interested in closing the case, than in seeing that you get justice. He gets the same salary, whether he sticks around and hassles the guardian, or just bangs the gavel and goes home.
Any money you do get will likely be in a standard medical trust, which means you can’t touch it except for medical expenses until you are 21. Or maybe 25. Some states say 21, some 25. The trust can be used for ANY medical expenses. So you won’t be eligible for CHIP insurance, and will HAVE to use the trust for medical expenses of any kind, as we cannot afford regular insurance. A lot of your trust may be gone by the time you are old enough to collect it.
Here’s what you passed up: Your step-mom was willing to fight a protracted legal battle to secure a settlement of $250,000 or more, in a trust that would pay you a monthly allowance of several hundred dollars, with clauses that allow you to tap the trust for college expenses whenever you need to.
You can win big when you play for keeps, but you can also lose big, and you are the littlest kid on the block. You badly need a friend in the game, and there's only one player who can help. Think about it.
Love,
Dad
