Day of the Dead.

My morning began in Surrogate's Court, a place I rarely tread. It may be called Probate Court or Court of Ordinary where you're from, but around here it's the name for the place where people, legally, literally go to die.

Everywhere I've appeared in them, they have a history of being what I refer to as "old boy courts"- where a tight-knit bar of (mostly) older (mostly) men make their late-life livings off the generations of wills they've accumulated. They have their own procedure statute, their own forms, and their own Way of Doing Things.

The current Surrogate Judge in our location is neither old nor boy, and she tries somewhat to level the playing field: we're all a lot more equal after assuming room temperature, and the courtroom is typically a resting place of Big Boys with Big Toys, but also the last resort of smaller estates, which at least today tended to bring out the actual litigants over a lot less money.

What struck me the most was how quick, and informal, everything went. More than once, the Judge, in re-calling a case, asked if a particular attorney or litigant was "in the house." Now, there's an alternative old-school rendering of that phrase which Eleanor picked up on (think "Is there a doctor in the house?" in a 50s movie trope), but to my ears it was a bit of  an attempt at (very) Vanilla Ice rap on the judge's part.

I naturally heard more in my head at that point:

We have jurisdiction, from the proofs you can see,
So there ain't no impediment to a probate decree
The guardian ad litems are all in the house
And ain't no objections, not even from a mouse
Their fees are acceptable, an Executor waits my say,
You'll get it in your e-filing, have a nice day.

Somehow, I don't think Hamilton is in for much competition:P

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So my day began. It ended at the immediately prior stop on the road to Probate.

A client needed to meet with me after hours. Somehow, we decided that the most convenient spot was an office park at a nearby major intersection.  I got there first.  Across the street from it was a place I've seen many times, and unfortunately been into several times in recent years.  It always struck me as a unique combination of businesses:


So I walked over and took that there very picture. As I dodged rush-hour traffic to get back to the meeting point across the street, I heard a distressed voice coming from a dark suit calling after me: "SIR! SIRRRR!"

I ignored it. My hearing's not so good, yaknow, although probably better than many of their customers. Eventually, he gave up and went back inside to his nice mahogggggany.

Not that I was missing the point: I'm sure he was concerned that I was intruding upon the dignity of the recently deceased by photographing the double doors of a law firm/funeral parlor.  And I'd respect that concern, were it not for the fact that Buffalo is home to a much larger, and infinitely more Internet-mocked, chain of such facilities:



You almost have to wonder what the "Exit" sign is for.

I concluded my business, and after coming home we caught up on this week's Fargo- a series guaranteed to keep this line of business quite busy for years to come, you betcha.