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Show Decision Expected Soon How to Avoid Probate! Author At Best-Sell-er By David Gregorio Associated Press Writer NEW YORK Norman Dacey, who outraged the legal establishg ment n 1966 with his How To Avoid Probate! is back again. And he is still denouncing pro-I, bate judges and lawyers, who he charges rob wid- ows and orphans of large shares of - best-sellin- 7 P j and a judge convicted Dacey for criminal contempt of court Dacey later got the injunction and the conviction overturned. Dacey says his skirmishes with lawyers helped him sell more books. How To Avoid Probate!" became the first paperback ever to top the New York Times best-selllist, where it was No. 1 for months. It remained a best seller for more than a year, and 2 million copies have been sold. er Synfuels Aid in Limbo It Again gait gal Dacey says his health began to fail after 15 years of fighting over his book. So he retired and put all this behind me. I live beside a quiet lake in Ireland and there is no stress there. He says he gets an occasional letter from some widow who says We followed your advice and it worked perfectly. The God bless you letters are even better than the royalties, he says. - tribune Business Friday, November Section B 25, 1983 Page 6 I their inheri-- 4 Bruce DUFFY HammoncI tances. Dacey, 75, has emerged from retirement in Ireland to peddle a newly revised edition of his book, updated to help readers take advantage of new tax laws. How To Avoid Probate!" advises readers to forego writing a will and instead set up living trusts, which Dacey says can spare their heirs the delays, publicity and legal fees associated with having a will processed through probate court after they die. Utterly Corrupt System Probate is the process by which courts ensure validity of wills and settle disputes between claimants of assets not covered by the will. If someone dies without leaving a will, a probate court divides the estate according to state law. Dacey says probate remains an utterly corrupt system that lawyers and judges use to squeeze fees and court costs from an estate before passing on the inheritance. Lawyers are the hidden heirs in every will, he contends. How To Avo.d Probate! is filled with forms that Dacey says any literate person can use to place possessions including bank accounts, securities, cars and copyin living trusts. rights the forms, a person can put Using his possessions in trust for an heir, but remains in control of those posessions as the executor of the trust, he says. Upon the persons death, the trustee automatically becomes the executor of the trust and since there is no will and no estate left to dispute, the probate process is avoided, Dacey says Abounds With Tirades His book abounds with tirades against the probate system, including numerous horror stories about lawyers and judges milking inheritances for expensive fees before handing them over to the heirs. Daceys outspoken style and the inclusion of forms in the book outraged lawyers in 1966, who sued him and tried to ban the book. But after the proliferation of self-hel- p legal books in recent years, lawyers probably will greet Daceys latest effort with a pretty much reaction, says lawyer Joesph of an AmeriImbriaco, can Bar Association committee dealing with estate planning and probate. Imbriaco says the original opposition was brought on largely by certain selfish concerns in the bar. ho-hu- m No Longer Applies I think the days of the after the layman or bar going for the practice of law through writing a book are pretty much over with, he adds. He agrees that living trusts can be very valuable and useful in planning estates, but says that avoiding probate is a relatively minor benefit. He also cautions against using Daceys forms. He says readers should get some knowledgeable advice before they can use them intelligentnon-lawy- er MKE POSITIVE- KVePOFWKUTOMT? Bits, Bytes, Other Stuff Frustrate Yule Buyers BOSTON (AP) Roger and Susan Bergen were frustrated. After listening to three hours of bits and bytes, Apples, Acorns and Adams at a computer show, they were no closer to deciding which computer to buy for their childrens Christmas. Its very confusing for us, said Bergen, a businessman from Eastham, Mass. We even talked to a man at a booth for a computer magazine. When we asked him what would be the best system to get, he just said, Good luck. Their dilemma is shared by many potential buyers of home computers in the volatile electronics industry, where yesterdays success could be tomorrows failure. People are confused and scared, said Gary Sinewitz, vice president of marketing for the Computer Store, a chain of nine stores from Boston to Washington, D.C. They hear about all these companies having trouble and theyre afraid of buying something from someone who might be out of the business next year. News Accents Bad In the past few months, the news from the financial pages could give the uninitiated the impression that the bubble has burst for the computer industry. For example: In September, Osborne Computer Corp., once the hottest of the hot in the personal computer business, filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy laws. Analysts say the California company made the mistake of announcing a new portable model before it was ready for market. Atari Inc., once the king of the home video game industry, announced it lost 6536.3 million in the first nine months of the year. Texas Instruments quit the home computer market, revealing it had lost 6513 million before taxes in FIND WHAT YOU WANT WITH CLASSIFIED. 237-200- 0 not to be identified. The corporation is coming down to the position. The corporations likely decision to provide federal price support for the gas produced by the Great Plains project, the biggest of the na-- , tions synthetic fueis ventwes, is the apparent result of an unusual rec- New York Times Service WASHINGTON The United States Synthetic Fuels Corp., set up by the government to help create a but now major new industry struggling to justify its existence is poised to aid a number of costly new projects and to rescue a 62 billion coal gasification plant from possible abandonment. The corporation is expected to decide at a board meeting Nov. 30 whether to make further commitments to the Great Plains coal gasification project in North Dakota and to at least two projects designed to extract petroleum from oil shale. The corporation is likely to approve the Cathedral Bluffs shale project in Colorado sponsored by the Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Tenneco Inc., and the Seep Ridge shale project in Utah sponsored by Geokinetics Inc. This backing comes as the agency is assailed by some conservatives who complain that it is a waste of taxpayers money, and by some environmentalists and liberals who say that it is not doing enough to develop alternative sources of energy. Bills have been introduced in both the Senate and House that would severely curtail the role of the corporation or abolish it entirely. There is significant and growing dissatisfaction with the program, said a senior SFC official who asked three-year-o- from the White ommendation House. Although the seven-memb- D ld six months. Blame rested on its Model a small home computer 99-4- a, that was discounted several times from a high price of 6299 to a low of a 699. Ironically, some think the may be the big Christmas success some retailers are selling it for as little as 649. Uncertainties Abound Even the successful companies face the Christmas season with some uncertainties. Coleco Industries Inc. was considered a sure winner when it announced it would come out with Adam, a home computer featuring keyboard, printer and other items in one package, for around 6800. But Coleco kept pushing back its delivery date. Now retailers are worried they will not get enough units for Christmas. Several retail chains say they will not advertise Adam for Christmas. William Meserve, who watches the home computer industry for Arthur D. Little Inc., a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., believes the consumer will benefit from these turbulent times. The reality is that this Christmas season, youre going to have a fair amount to choose from under 6100, he said. Analysts do not believe individual problems spell doom for the industry. Meserve says computer manufacturers have tapped only 10 percent of their potential market. InfuCorp., a market research firm in Cupertino, Calif., predicts home computer market sales will double to 64.6 billion by 1987. But some say high expectations for this year led some companies to mistakes. Companies like Texas Instruments and Atari tried to grab a bigger share of the market by dropping their prices. Instead they found themselves trapped in a damaging price war. YOURE INVITED TO THE SALT LAKE CITY 99-4- run Featuring Franklin and Eagle Computers Special Package Franklin ACE 1 200 business serial-parall- el tion monitor. Plus Wordstar (tm word processing software with Mailmerge (tm). ACECalc spreadsheet and a BMC letter-quali- ty printer. Total retail price of the components separately Is: 54417.00 Special Price: m PRACTICAL $2995.00 COMPUTER ?2S3 SYSTEMS 2701 South MainSalt Lake City.Utah 84115(801)485-621- 2 $65,000,000 Western Air Lines, Inc. 14 Senior Secured Convertible Notes Due 1998 Interest payable semiannually on best-selle- Plus accrued interest, ei- r. 1, 1. 1984. Price $1,000 Per Note from date liv- ther had not heard of the trusts or refused to cooperate. So Dacey wrote living trusts for his clients himself until 1964, when the Connecticut Bar Association obtained an injunction barring him or his company from writing any more trusts. Since he could no longer write the trusts for his clients. Dacey invested 622,000 of his own money to publish How To Avoid Probate! Some local bookstores sold all 10,000 copies he had printed within 16 days. Mike Douglas, the TV talk show host, invited Dacey to appear on the air and talk about avoiding probate and the book became a national June 1 and December commencing June tant. He advised his clients to start ing trusts, he says, but lawyers if any, of issuance. Copies of the Prospectus may be obtained in any S .ate in which this announcement is circulated only from the undersigned or such others as may legally offer these securities in such State. E. F. The New York County Lawyers Association then won an injunction prohibiting distribution of the book i full-carria- ge daisy wheel This announcement is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy these securities. The offer is made only by the Prospectus. ni and word processing system, including a Franklin ACE 1200 with two disk drives. 80 column display card, Interface card. 1 2 high resolu- ly. He also says Dacey overstates the case against probate. Some of the things in his book are completely untrue, Imbriaco says. Hes on a crusade so he paints with a broad brush. The 50 states have 50 different probate systems and some are worse than others. Imbriaco says Daceys original book was part of an environment in which reform of the probate laws was brought about. Since then, he says, many states have adopted the bar's Uniform Probate Code, which is designed to ensure the probate process is less expensive and more efficient. Dacey dismisses the code as but ineffective. He says lawyers have been opposed to living trusts since the 1930s, when Dacey quit his job as a newspaper reporter in Bridgeport, Conn., and became a private estate consul- er board was apparently becoming increasingly sympathetic toward the financial pleas of Great Plains sponsors, an intercession earlier this month by presidential counselor Edwin Meese 3d is thought to have helped make further aid almost certain. Meese summoned the SFC chairman, Edward EL Noble, to the White House to press the case for further subsidy. The Great Plains project, 88 percent built, already has 62 billion of loan guarantees issued in 1981 by the Department of Energy. The sponAmer-iCvasors, led by the Detroit-base- d now Natural Hssourccs Co.t threatening to abandon the project if they do not get hundreds of millions of dollars in price guarantees from the SFC. Abandonment would leave the government with claims on the 62 billion of loan guarantees and it would probably further weaken the ability of the SFC to survive in its present form. (Copyright) Hutton & Company Inc. i |