The Bari Chronicles The Lives and Deaths of a Piedmont, San Francisco and Sonoma Family Episode 4

The Bari Chronicles

The Lives and Deaths of a Piedmont, San Francisco and Sonoma Family

Episode 4

 

The weekly saga of the Bari Family is presented to you as a light hearted tale of estate planning gone awry.  Through the lives of this particularly unusual family, you may learn some fundamentals of estate planning but mostly have some fun in the process. As you will see, however, estate planning is an oxymoron.

 

Episode 4

Danny Shows His Stripes

 

“Danny!  What’s the matter with you?”  Bernardo Bertolucci family friend of the Bari’s for 40 years yelled at his surrogate son of the same number of years.  “You’re acting like you never chopped a veal steak before!”

 

Daniel Bari, scion of the Bari family, oldest son, father of 2 teen-age boys and manager of the successful family restaurant was beating on the veal steaks from Italy like they were pieces of round steak from Costco.  “Sorry Bernie” Danny replied to the man he loved almost more than his father.  “I’m just needing to take someone’s head off- and I guess the veal got in the way”

 

“Better the veal than the head. So what’s the matter? You’ve been acting more nervous these past few days than I have seen you since you though Gerrie was pregnant in high school.”  Bernie knew the Bari family better in many ways than it knew itself and Danny’s behavior was not normal.

 

“No it is not normal”, thought Danny.  “In one year I have managed to not only completely mess up my own life, but I have set my father up to be killed, I’ve potentially destroyed the family business, I’ve disgraced myself with my boys and I’ve created a blight on my mother about everything she holds dear.  No it is not normal so to hell with the veal.” and he began beating the dead daylights out of what was left of the calf tenderloin.

 

At 40, Danny was handsome, outwardly successful, a family man with a nice home in Montclair and a wife, Chloris, who had all the Italian spirit of his mother.  He coached in the U-18 league for Montclair soccer, was in the Business club, Oakland Rotary and contributed heavily to not only Oakland but also the Piedmont schools.  Both boys were at O’Dowd, both were good athletes and good students. 

 

Danny however had made one mistake.  The memory of it would haunt him for the rest of his life (however long that might be).

 

Six weeks earlier, Danny was reviewing the books of the restaurant for the first time in several months.  To his amazement, he discovered that not only had there been no deposits actually made in the bank, but loans had been taken out by somebody signing his name all in the high six figures.  The incredible thing was that he couldn’t figure out who had done all of this.  Very few people in the business had access to the financial records.  The bookkeeper, Juanita Peron, had been with the restaurant for as many years as Danny could remember.  Bernie, of course had access to everything, but he was family.  Then there was Mom and Dad.  That was about it.  Somebody, however had both drained all of the accounts of the restaurant and leveraged all of its assets- and the restaurant had nothing to show for it.  It was bankrupt!

 

Turning his attention back to Bernardo, who by this time was simply trying to make himself scarce in the face of Danny’s behavior, he forced a smile and tried to fake his old self.

 

“It’s OK, Bernie.  I’m just dealing with some little things that are getting to me.  Sorry about the veal- let’s get another one out of the cold storage.”

“Sure, Danny, but you got to remember that I am here for you.  We are all family,” said Bernardo. 

 

Looking again at his mentor, he felt like that was closer to the truth than the facts admitted.  Then his mind turned back to the disaster he somehow let happen.  What was he to do? 

 

(Bankrupt!  The entire Bari fortune was now facing oblivion.  What will Danny, or his father Auggie or mother Angelina do?  They have lots of other property, but it looks like that may also have been leveraged.  By whom?  Even though Danny has had his problems with guns and his wife Chloris, he is obviously not a suspect- but could Angela (and/or Bernardo) have done this?   And what will he do to solve the problem?  OK- your turn.  Try to develop an estate plan, based on these facts!  Stay turned to future episodes to see if you are right.)