Based on Connecticut’s equitable distribution standards, Harold was ordered to pay Margaret sixty percent of the total marital estate, a figure which, after accounting for all assets, came to approximately $3.1 million, including the house or its equivalent cash value if it were to be sold.
Franklin Tate was referred to the Connecticut Bar’s disciplinary committee for review in connection with his role in the original asset-transfer strategy.
Karen Whitfield was named as a knowing participant in the fraudulent conveyance scheme and was ordered to provide an accounting of all professional services she had rendered to Harold during the period in question. A separate civil claim against her was possible, Clare noted, if I chose to pursue it.
I sat at Ruth’s kitchen table with the phone to my ear and looked out the window at the field behind her house where the light was coming through the trees at the angle it only does in early autumn.
“Margaret,” Clare said, “did you hear all of that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I heard every word.”
I thanked her. I told her she had been extraordinary. She said the evidence had been extraordinary and that my own preparation had made her job considerably easier. We agreed to speak again the following day to discuss implementation steps.
I set the phone down.
Ruth was in the doorway.
She had heard enough.
I stood up and she crossed the kitchen and we held each other the way sisters do. Not elegantly.
Just completely.
And I felt, for the first time in what seemed like a very long time, the specific relief of a burden that has been set down after being carried for so long you had stopped noticing its weight.
We didn’t speak for a long moment. There was nothing that needed saying that the silence couldn’t hold better.
Ruth finally pulled back and looked at me. Really looked, the way she had been doing since we were girls, and her eyes were bright and her chin was steady and she said very quietly:
“Mom would have been proud of you.”
I had to look away after that, not because it hurt, but because it was too large to receive all at once.