Last Will Testament Sample Maryland: Fill & Download for Free

I’m not sure that I ever had the feeling that I had finally “made it.” I felt all along that I was making it, making it at whatever task or career I set myself to, making it at the moment. What improvement, what personal and professional development was to come would be the next in a continuing series of personal challenges each expanding my horizons yet again.I never felt at any stage that I had “finally” made it. Nothing was final. There was always the prospect of further challenges, further accomplishments, and further yet “making it.”That was the way it was from 13 and 7th grade through high school and university, and on to my professional careers. Careers, not jobs.On this journey, there were five truly momentous milestones, momentous, that is, relative to my development at that point.Earning sufficient scholarships to allow me to do my freshman year in college without working and with no help from anyone.In the second semester of my junior year of high school, Johns Hopkins University guaranteed me admission upon graduation the next year. Then, in the second semester of my senior year, my father told me he would not support me after I turned 18. Specifically, he would provide absolutely no support for me in college. If I were to do it, I would have to pay for it myself.I went out and applied for every scholarship and grant that I could identify. I was sufficiently good that I got all of them including a four-year grant from the Maryland governor. I earned, by dint of my academic performance, enough money that my tuition, books, room, and board were paid for. And, I had enough left over to spend on fringe benefits like a new, full stereo system and paying all costs of the little Volkswagen Beetle that my grandmother and my mother (secretly) paid for and gave me. It cost them $500 each in 1966 money. I never forgot that kindness.I knew I had made the transition from dependent juvenile to independent adult embarked upon a new adventure that I had earned and paid for.As it turned out, I did work during my freshman year (and every year thereafter) not because I had to but because I earned the opportunities, and because it was fun and exciting work.I was kind of adopted by a professor in the graduate engineering school who taught a freshman class in computer science. I took the course and finished all the work for the 14-week semester in something like 6 weeks.He found me a paid position with the chair of the physics department who had a computer project that he needed help on. Then he got me a paid graduate-level teaching assistantship teaching a section of the computer course. I held that TA through my senior year by which time I was teaching two sections myself and supervising the other 12 TAs.But that all just came as a matter of course. The milestone where I thought I had made it, that is had arrived at a seminal point, was the earning of the scholarships and my transition into an independent adult who could and did fend for himself in the big guys’ world.Becoming an independent, self-employed computer systems analyst/programmer handling three contracts at the same time.Out of university, I got a job with RCA’s Computer Systems Division in DC. My salary was $15, 800, $800 more than my parents combined income that year. Later, RCA left the computer sector. It closed down all its divisions, sold all its assets, and laid off some 3,000 people, I included.I got another job. The company owner screwed me over. I quit and landed a contract with a company that had a contract with then DHEW to develop and implement a nation-wide system to track and support all the physician assistants under its purview. The company contracted the job out to me as an independent contractor.Running the project off my bicycle and in tennis whites, I wrote the specifications, hired the programmers to write the code, and supervised them. I was 24I got two more contracts and did them at the same time.That was a milestone. I was my own boss. I was earning money hand over fist. I was suddenly not only an independent, self-supporting young man but also a damn good one.Being appointed an acting District Court judge in Fairbanks while also serving as law clerk to the chief judge of the Superior Court.I won’t detail my transition from a computer systems analyst/programmer to law school graduate. But, at 29, I found myself having graduated from law school and studying for the California bar exam.One day, the phone on my desk at home rang. The voice said he was the chief judge of the Alaska Superior Court based in Fairbanks, and he wanted to offer me a clerkship. He had heard of me from the Alaska Supreme Court chief justice who was his long-time hunting buddy. The Chief Justice had heard of me from his law clerk who had been in an appellate advocacy course that I was asked by the dean to teach during my second year. This girl had been a third-year student in that course.She had talked me up to the Chief Justice who, on a hunting trip, had talked me up to the chief judge, who thereupon offered me the clerkship without having seen a writing sample or having an interview.I had, just before, obtained a clerkship with an Idaho judge on the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a prestigious appointment. But I already knew how to write. I decided that a trial court clerkship would better expand my experience. Anyway, Alaska would be a fun and fine adventure. Who wanted to move to Idaho?The Alaska Superior Court is the trial court of general jurisdiction having dominion over civil cases of $10,000 or more and felony criminal cases. The Alaska District Court is the trial court of inferior jurisdiction having dominion over civil cases less than $10,000 and misdemeanor criminal cases. The Superior Court chief judge has plenary jurisdiction over all the District Court judges.Halfway through my clerkship, the chief judge appointed me an acting District Court judge who would hear all pleadings, guilty pleas, and civil cases tried to the court. He had assigned the other judges to hear criminal jury trials and do nothing more. All the other business of the court would be handled by me. I served as acting judge while also holding the post of divorce master, and doing all the other duties of my clerkship.I had three jobs, and one of them was as a judge. I was in my first year out of law school. It was a fantastic testament to my abilities and professionalism. I knew I had arrived in the big guys’ world of law. It was 1979. I was 31 and well embarked on a second career. That was a milestone on the way to my legal career.Being told by the owner of the Philadelphia law firm in which I had worked for only four years, that I was to supervise and approve all the written work of three other attorneys, one senior to me.At the end of my clerkship, the second in command at a new Philadelphia law firm contacted me and asked that I interview with him. He had heard of me from a man whom I had helped and who was a client of the firm. I interviewed with him in his hotel room in Los Angeles while he was on a trip on a case. He recommended me to the owner. The owner interviewed me an offered me the job.It was the last week of September 1979. At the end of my first year, I asked the owner for a $10,000 raise from $20,000 to $30,000. It was unprecedented, but the owner gave me the raise over the objection his second in command. It was only my second year out of law school, and there were 4th- and 5th-year lawyers at the firm earning less than or just more than I.That was an affirmation of my worth, but I wasn’t doing it for the money. I was doing it for the challenge and sheer fun I was having. The money was nice, but the amount was not so significant as the fact that I was so highly valued.But the milestone came two years later. The firm owner told me that I was to review, edit, and approve the written product of three other lawyers in the firm. They weren’t to file a court document without my seal of approval. One of them was senior to me.Up to that point, the owner and the second in command had reviewed the work product of all the attorneys, myself included before it was filed. But now, the owner was putting a third of that workload on me. He not only trusted in my abilities so much that he allowed me to file without prior review, but put me in charge of a third of the work.I was four years out of law school. That may seem like a lot, but in a world where 6th-year associates still didn’t supervise junior associates, I was doing it as a 4th-year associate. It was 1983. I was earning $60,000, but, again, it wasn’t the money, it was the recognition by and the trust of a brilliant trial attorney and legal mind that were the reward.That was a milestone. I knew then that I had arrived as a lawyer. It wasn’t the point of making it, but it was a point, a significant point, on the way in my second career.Successfully taking over a significant litigation case already into a pivotal hearing with one day’s preparation time.I won’t take your time explaining how I came to be in an Arkansas law firm in 1987. The firm exclusively represented farmers being foreclosed on by banks, insurance company lenders, and the federal Farmers Home Loan Agency. It had cases in several different states, none of them Arkansas. It needed an accomplished litigator to take over it’s increasing trial caseload.I arrived at the firm and, with one day’s prep time, took over a complex case in Illinois in mid-hearing. A bank was trying to foreclose on one of its borrowers not because the borrower was behind on the loan, he wasn’t, but because of a technical provision in the mortgage that it thought would let it get its capital back and reinvest it at a higher rate of return. It was about to screw the farmer so it could make more money.The bank had filed papers in court to enforce its foreclosure notice. The day I took over the case was late on a Saturday. I barely had time to meet the client and retrieve the files that Saturday. I had Sunday to prepare before the hearing on the bank’s motion on Monday.In that county, the customary practice for as long as anyone remembered was that the bank got a hearing on its motion for an order of forced sale that lasted about an hour. The bank put on an officer who testified that the farmer was in violation of a term of the mortgage. The farmer couldn’t disprove the violation. The court found for the bank, signed the order and everyone went home.Well, I wasn’t about to let that happen. I objected to every move the bank made. I made a novel argument that the customary practice was a violation of Illinois’ constitutional protections guaranteeing the farmer effective representation, a fair and full hearing, and the right to examine his opponent. No one in the county or any of the surrounding counties had ever made that argument. It opposed a customary practice that went back beyond anybody’s recollection. It took some arguing with an ever more cantankerous and angry judge, but I convinced him I was right.I turned what was supposed to have been an hour-long hearing into a 12-day mini-trial. I caught the bank vice president in a lie and forced him to admit it on the stand. I got the judge to the point that he didn’t believe any of the bank’s witnesses and he thought the bank’s attorneys were complicit in adducing perjured testimony.I took over control in that courtroom and convinced the judge to rule for me on every material motion or objection. I destroyed the bank’s and its attorneys’ credibility. Attorneys and even judges from three surrounding counties were sitting day after day in the courtroom watching me. And I did it on one Sunday’s prep time in a case that was already underway.I had been in trials in complex litigations before. That part alone wasn’t unusual. One day’s prep time was a first, however. Proving perjured testimony was also a first.But what was really the kicker was upending a years-long customary practice that no Illinois trial attorney had ever thought to disturb. The kicker was convincing the judge that his practice for years was unconstitutional in Illinois. The kicker was that when the judge was frustrated in his usual practice, and so angry with me that the veins in his neck and temple turned visibly red and throbbed, when every other attorney in the courtroom was backing away in fright and cowardice, I stood up to him and convinced him that he was wrong and I was right. The kicker was that I took control of the courtroom away not only from the opposing bank’s counsel but also from the judge.That was a milestone in my career. I knew that I had arrived as an accomplished litigator with a mind and bent to challenge everything I could and prevail. I had other attorneys and judges sitting in on my case to see a trial attorney at work, at his best.That 12-day hearing felt really good.I would go on for another five years doing much the same in numerous cases. At one point, I had 26 active litigations in 26 different states, literally from California to Georgia, from Texas to North Dakota. I was constantly flying from one deposition, hearing, trial, or oral argument in an appellate court to another. In an average year, I spent six months away from home. And I had a grand time doing it. But the milestone was that Illinois hearing.But, in 1991, a crippling depression took me down, felled me like a lumberjack attacking a sapling. That depression lasted a year and put an end to my career as a litigator. I spent that year holed up in my home in Fayetteville. I didn’t go out except for my weekly appointment with my treating psychiatrist.At the end of that year, he and I thought I was ready to try practicing law again. But that didn’t work out. My lover and I decided to move to San Diego where he could advance his career as an Emergency Department nurse. I could try to practice law back in California.But that wasn’t to be either. Another bout with depression, my fourth in my lifetime, put an end to my working. That one lasted 12 years.So, my milestone in Illinois was my last. I never had another point where I thought I had made it.Q:What was the defining moment in your life when you knew you had finally “made it”?