By Michelle Seiler-Tucker, Special for USDR
On Tuesday, a New Orleans judge ruled that Saints and Pelicans owner Tom Benson must undergo a physical and mental exam by three physicians as family members still continue to fight over his mental competency (also known as fighting over his money). The billionaire wrote a note back in January that announced he was severing financial ties with his daughter and children and therefore planned to pass on future ownership of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans professional sports teams to his third wife instead. Of course money gluttony led the forever money hungry family members to try and convince the judge that their dear old patriarch is mentally incompetent to do such things, and is causing damage to the family trust.
Tom Benson is worth about $1.7 billion, and so of course his billionaire heiresses did not take his disinheritance seriously and quickly followed their being fired from key jobs within his sports, banking and Auto Empire by suing him in an attempt to prevent their assets from being taken away from their trust funds. The heirs are challenged the patriarch’s mental competency and are asked a Louisiana state judge to appoint someone to manage all of Benson’s personal and business affairs. Now Benson must prove he is mentally stable, just physically old and tired—which is the weapon being used against him in this billion dollar family feud.
I always thought the word F.A.M.I.L.Y was really an acronym that originated from the idea of, “Forget About Me, I Love You,” but my own life’s financial successes has taught me that money can change a person if they have a predisposition towards a bad personality trait or a questionable moral compass. Without a constant system of checks and balances, money can blind a person, a family, a community, a business, and with enough of it, even a whole country. I have worked hard to get where I am. Money is freedom and empowers a person to answer to no one but their moral code. I think that when a person goes through their whole life never needing or wanting for anything and always receiving, they begin to think themselves entitled to everything. This is the problem with Tom Benson’s family. I think it is ludicrous that Benson’s daughter has stooped so low as to challenge her own father’s mental competency with an the weak argument that he’s mentally debilitated because of a diet of too much candy, ice cream, soda and red wine. HA! If he is mentally incompetent then so is a good portion of the United States. Her appeal to be cut from her father’s will is pathetic, and such an argument shows that she has nothing but herself to blame for whatever reason Benson has decided to disinherit her and his grandchildren. The third wife signed a prenuptial agreement, which means that she was set to inherit nothing, but Benson has now written down that he wants to give her everything.
Every day we are forced to cooperate and work with people we do not care for. Perhaps this is one life lesson that cost the Benson much more than they ever bargained for. There is absolutely zero evidence Benson is mentally incompetent. The doctors will eventually conclude that he is in fact perfectly capable of disinheriting whoever he wishes, and this case will be over.
0
0
