Shelton Family Saga

Chapter 38

Esquire for Hire

Nicholas Andros was in his thirty fifth year as an estate attorney and doing exceptionally well. He had long ago left that small leased building space with the sign out front that bore only his name Nicholas Andros, Esq. He had his own firm now with a team of attorneys that worked under his guidance. His firm specialized in family and estate law, corporate tax law and wealth management. Andros & Andros Private Equity Firm were well known for their reputation of preserving generational wealth for those with old money, as well as for those with new found wealth. The firm did a superb job of preserving it for their clients to pass forward to future generations. Nicholas did very little work in the way of handling clients portfolios and estate plans himself, with the exception of two V.I.P.'s. His biggest client, Vanessa Shelton, was a billionaire racehorse owner with combined assets from a variety of different business ventures, the most prosperous being Shelton Stables. That particular one was her Equestrian Training Center and home to more world champion American Quarter Horses and Thoroughbred racehorses than any other training facility stateside. Her horses did so well in their races, he found himself betting in their races more times than he should have thus bringing about a gambling habit he'd yet to shake. He believed in the horses of Shelton Stables, but even more so, he believed in the Shelton family. He had a longstanding friendship with Myles Shelton, Vanessa's uncle, which is how he acquired Vanessa as a client from the very beginning. Even before Vanessa's horses started winning their races, he'd already been informed by Myles that he would be the one to handle all the Shelton family business affairs; however, believing it was of her own accord, Ms. Shelton had come to see him to establish a Dynasty Trust, otherwise known as a family trust. She only had one heir, her daughter Cazee, but she wanted to have all the necessary papers in order, should anything happen to her. Nicholas, all by himself, had drawn up the paperwork for her estate plan making sure to cover the gift tax and estate tax, as well as the GSTT (generation skipping transfer tax) to preserve her wealth and to include provisions such as a spendthrift fund, to allot for education and living expenses for her daughter, as well as any future descendants. The only difficult part of the process was that she had her assets spread out across many different vehicles. From stocks, bonds, mutual, index and hedge funds to tangible resources such as her land, jewelry, exotic animal skin handbags, as well as a private art collection, antique cars, vintage coins, collector dolls and private ownership in sports teams and her personal cosmetics brand. She had pretty much wanted everything grouped together, but it had proved a bit tricky, being some of the items were not in her possession. For instance, a vast majority of her private art was on loan to museums and universities, which put them under the custodial care of their borrowers, even though she still held the primary legal right to them all. Nicholas was exceptionally gifted at his calling, so gifted in fact that he managed to name himself as intercessor to her estate. No one knew about that part, except him. It was in the fine print on page 272 of the 517 page will and last testament of her paperwork. It had been mixed in among her financial records of sales and earnings, projected sales, expense reports, SEC filings and lots of other mundane stuff that clients were always too busy to read and expected their legal team to ethically handle. Nicholas had once been that way. Ethical in all matters; but, of course as the years spanned and the economy transformed, life seemed to throw some curve balls his way causing his moral compass to curve as well. After his divorce, things had really taken a dip. That's when he started tying up the "loose ends" of affairs with Shelton Stables and everything again fell nicely into place, for both his client, as well as himself. Things had really worked out well for Nicholas in his life. Not only did his firm oversee the account for Vanessa Shelton, but his other big client was her uncle, Myles Shelton. It was astounding to him how much wealth his longtime friend Myles, or Hoochie as he had grown up knowing him, had amassed. He knew Hoochie didn't use local banks, credit unions or savings and loan companies. Hoochie preferred to keep his wealth far out of sight of prying eyes and out of reach of greedy hands; so he Nicholas Andros, Esq. was the only one who knew Hoochie's asset valuation and net worth. No one else could come close to accurately speculating on the amount, cause no other living soul knew; well, except maybe one person. Hollywood!