Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits.
Speaker 2: Shakespeare famously wrote, neither a borrower nor a lender be
Speaker 2: for loan OFT loses both itself and friend. Can money
Speaker 2: drive a wedge between organizations that are otherwise friendly? A
Speaker 2: legal dispute between the Freedom from Religion Foundation and American
Speaker 2: Atheists over a deceased donor's estate has finally been resolved.
Speaker 2: The conflict began when Ronald Pelly's twenty twelve notarized trust
Speaker 2: allocated forty five percent of his estate to FFRF, but
Speaker 2: a twenty eighteen handwritten, unnotorized memo introduces changes that reduced
Speaker 2: FFRF's share and added American Atheists and Planned Parenthood as beneficiaries.
Speaker 2: Pelly's son, acting as trustee, used the twenty eighteen memo
Speaker 2: to redistribute funds, which led FFRF to sue for an
Speaker 2: accounting and to ensure the original donor's wishes were followed.
Speaker 2: Despite tensions, all parties eventually settled, and each organization ended
Speaker 2: up receiving more money then expected due to a larger
Speaker 2: estate pool. FFRF stated their intent was never to harm
Speaker 2: fellow secular groups, but to uphold the donor's intent. Both
Speaker 2: organizations expressed relief and are now refocusing on their missions.
Speaker 2: The story is from The Friendly Atheist by haimont Meta,
Speaker 2: published on April eighth, twenty twenty five. So, Jonathan, I'd
Speaker 2: like to start with you today. This mess seems worse
Speaker 2: than trying to untangle a spider web. Can you hash
Speaker 2: out some of the details for us?
Speaker 3: Sure? And what occurred to me when I first read
Speaker 3: this article was that it was framed as a conflict
Speaker 3: when it was it was just a legal move to
Speaker 3: force the executor to disclose all the assets that were
Speaker 3: in the trust and in some other accounts that were
Speaker 3: supposed to be dispersed. And the reason for accepting and
Speaker 3: what the reason was for the executor accepting assigned memo
Speaker 3: that had not been notarized or officially entered into the
Speaker 3: trust you will trust. And so since they hadn't gotten
Speaker 3: that information, they'd asked for it, they hadn't gotten it,
Speaker 3: they had to sue the And when you sue when
Speaker 3: there's a disbursement like this, when you sue the executor
Speaker 3: for information, you have to sue all the other participants
Speaker 3: in that trust and in that so that they are
Speaker 3: aware of what's going on. Otherwise, the legal proceedings are
Speaker 3: excluding them, and that's not since they're part of it,
Speaker 3: they shouldn't be. So that's why they had the name
Speaker 3: American Atheists and Planned Parenthood and the Triple A, which
Speaker 3: is the Atheist Alliance of America, which was disenfranchised by
Speaker 3: that note, you know, and the so.
Speaker 1: They were in the original will, but not.
Speaker 3: In the origin not in the updated one, so and
Speaker 3: so that's you know, that was bad for them. But
Speaker 3: the slight of hand coming out of the executor produced
Speaker 3: that memo showing him and getting ten percent more of
Speaker 3: the estate and others significantly less, and the Triple A
Speaker 3: nothing at all, and Planned Parenthood gets forty percent and
Speaker 3: Robert the executor gets twenty percent and thus adding about
Speaker 3: eighty one thousand dollars to his pockets. To me, always
Speaker 3: seemed a little fishy. But they didn't. They didn't accuse
Speaker 3: him of anything. They just said that the information was
Speaker 3: incomplete and that he had to give an accounting of
Speaker 3: all the accounts. And when he did do that, basically
Speaker 3: turned out that everybody mentioned in both documents made out,
Speaker 3: so they all got more than they would have if
Speaker 3: either one of them was just singlely done or together done.
Speaker 2: That's because there was a larger pool of money than
Speaker 2: they were expecting.
Speaker 3: There was more in the trust, and there was more
Speaker 3: in the fidelity account than the executor led on. So
Speaker 3: you know when they audited it. I guess when the
Speaker 3: court got hold of the actual bank statements, they figured
Speaker 3: it all out. And these things are very nuanced, they're
Speaker 3: very very hard to do. It's it's not an easy thing.
Speaker 3: I just want to say one last thing and then
Speaker 3: I'll bow out of this. And an a state lawyer
Speaker 3: had the most telling quote. I spoke to one nonprofit
Speaker 3: lawyer who was shocked that the American Atheists believed that
Speaker 3: the money was already theirs when they were distributed. There
Speaker 3: was an initial distribution based on the memo, right, and
Speaker 3: based on the first The first one was from the
Speaker 3: trust and the second one was for the memo and
Speaker 3: the American Atheists who were in the second part, the
Speaker 3: memo part. He said, I can't believe they groups don't
Speaker 3: touch legacy donations like that, no matter the amount, until
Speaker 3: all the legal concerns have been definitively taken care of,
Speaker 3: that's what and that takes time to settle. So rather
Speaker 3: than wait for all this to get out now. I
Speaker 3: guess they already spent some of it. But as it
Speaker 3: turned out, it was all good.
Speaker 2: You know, they sound like this kind thing is fairly
Speaker 2: common and that in that, like you said, at the
Speaker 2: beginning there it was cast as if it were some
Speaker 2: kind of confrontational lawsuit, you know, with arguments in the
Speaker 2: court and so forth. But really it was mostly or
Speaker 2: at least the way that they're presenting it now. Of course,
Speaker 2: you know, we're not privy to all of the details
Speaker 2: of what was going on behind closed doors, but they're
Speaker 2: kind of making it seem like it was. Really it's
Speaker 2: just a normal step in the normal process of adjudicating
Speaker 2: and making sure we have all of the information and
Speaker 2: and and if the executor wasn't being as forthcoming as
Speaker 2: as necessary, then you have to kind of compel them
Speaker 2: to share the information and so on. So it sounds
Speaker 2: like it was like a like just a you know,
Speaker 2: just a hoop that that had to be jump jumped
Speaker 2: through to kind of named.
Speaker 3: Yeah, since they named the other atheist groups, right, one
Speaker 3: of them got a little butt hurt about it, But
Speaker 3: we couldn't do it otherwise. And I think once they
Speaker 3: understood that, they probably would have joined in the suit,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's like rain. But you know, so
Speaker 3: this was just I think the communication was off, right, right,
Speaker 3: And both sides said that the communication of the other
Speaker 3: person was off. So it did look like a little
Speaker 3: spat was going on, But I don't think it was
Speaker 3: really serious. I think that they they eventually knew what happened,
Speaker 3: and we're happy with the settlement.
Speaker 2: All right, Eli even very patient, And so I want
Speaker 2: to jump over to you here. So the groups involved
Speaker 2: have have said publicly that their biggest worry about this
Speaker 2: whole thing is that it might send the wrong message
Speaker 2: to the public about these organizations, about how they interact
Speaker 2: with each other, and also about their commitment to their
Speaker 2: common objectives. And so how do you think the religious
Speaker 2: community is going to present this to their members if
Speaker 2: at all?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think it was a concern I had
Speaker 4: as well, because on the surface, it looks like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, the.
Speaker 1: F FRF is suing.
Speaker 4: Suing this this dead person for more money that they
Speaker 4: didn't get her, you know, suing other atheist groups for more.
Speaker 4: And you can if you don't explain anything about the
Speaker 4: reality of the situation, you can frame it as if
Speaker 4: it's just kind of this petty, ugly, messy sort of
Speaker 4: back and forth. But as Jonathan pointed out, like it
Speaker 4: just it wasn't really that way. It was just sort
Speaker 4: of a legal necessity. And you know, through no fault
Speaker 4: of their own, a couple of groups received more money
Speaker 4: than they were supposed to. And the one of the
Speaker 4: groups that got shorted was like, hey, something not right.
Speaker 4: That's not what that guy wanted his money to do
Speaker 4: after he died, and you're not respecting his wishes. So
Speaker 4: let's just do that and just kind of get this
Speaker 4: all worked out. The fact that justs like Jonathan said,
Speaker 4: the brother the deceased's brother was the executive of the estate,
Speaker 4: and he produced this unnotorized memo, which I think in
Speaker 4: this context unnotorized should be synonymous with completely irrelevent. And
Speaker 4: this is this memo that says like, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: give you know, change all of this at the last minute,
Speaker 4: and by the way, give the executor more money. Right.
Speaker 4: I think I think it was kind of poorly. Uh,
Speaker 4: the court system I think that was supposed to handle this,
Speaker 4: I think should have flagged that. So I think it was.
Speaker 2: Poorly Yeah, I mean, they didn't say in the in
Speaker 2: the article, whether or not anybody was actually accusing the
Speaker 2: executor of of doing anything, you know, on on toward
Speaker 2: or anything like that, or cheat, Yeah, cheating, I supposed
Speaker 2: to put it bluntly, but you know, we got to admit,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of room for a fishy smell to come
Speaker 2: out of that. I mean, that's yeah, there's definitely some
Speaker 2: you know, some things that were not not necessarily above
Speaker 2: board happening there, whether it was intentional or not, right.
Speaker 4: And I'm certainly speculating. I appreciate you, right, but yeah,
Speaker 4: it does it seems like it could be something strange
Speaker 4: afoot at the circle K.
Speaker 1: Right, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Let's just back to Jonathan for for a second here, So,
Speaker 2: so do you think that this was a I mean,
Speaker 2: we've been talking about this already, so you know, we
Speaker 2: may have already answered this, but I was just curious
Speaker 2: what your thoughts are. You know, do you think that
Speaker 2: the conflict was between the organizations themselves or was it
Speaker 2: between the organizations the executor or and this will add
Speaker 2: a new little twist, is it really kind of a
Speaker 2: problem with all of the groups involved, the organizations and
Speaker 2: the executor and maybe even the deceased, a conflict between
Speaker 2: that them as a as a as a single group
Speaker 2: and the way the government, you know, adjudicates this kind
Speaker 2: of thing. I mean, there's there's a certain amount of
Speaker 2: legal procedures that need to be followed, and are we
Speaker 2: highlighting a flaw there or where do you think the
Speaker 2: real cause?
Speaker 1: I mean is it?
Speaker 2: Is it really just a breakdown in communication or was
Speaker 2: it a faulty system or what do you think is
Speaker 2: happening with that?
Speaker 3: I think what caused it ultimately was the lack of
Speaker 3: discovery and the lack of getting the information on the
Speaker 3: trust fund and the Fidelity account and the other accounts,
Speaker 3: a detailed description of them, and with the balances and
Speaker 3: things like that, and what the balances were in that
Speaker 3: sort of thing, and for all the stuff that was
Speaker 3: supposed to be distributed. And I think his son was
Speaker 3: involved in the trust but part of that. But it
Speaker 3: doesn't it doesn't matter because the executor had a fiduciary
Speaker 3: responsibility to produce that to the people who were getting
Speaker 3: the things, and if he just didn't know he was
Speaker 3: supposed to do it, they asked for it, he didn't
Speaker 3: give it to him. Then they felt like they had
Speaker 3: to go to court and put it in an official
Speaker 3: mandatory situation, and as a result, everybody got happy. But
Speaker 3: I think in the process they got a little disgruntled
Speaker 3: about how it happened. But that's true because it wasn't
Speaker 3: a smooth process. But I could I can just say
Speaker 3: that I don't think they ever are a smooth process. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I think that everybody has that problem, you know,
Speaker 3: with but not everybody. Some of these things go smoothly.
Speaker 3: They still cost money and lawyers. They still still have
Speaker 3: to have a lawyer, you still have to go to probate,
Speaker 3: you still have to do all this stuff. It's going
Speaker 3: to be you know, and it's complicated. It's not an
Speaker 3: easy process. It could be streamlined, especially if there's no
Speaker 3: contesting in anything, you know, you know, just if the
Speaker 3: executor can just give people what they need and there's
Speaker 3: said and done with, right, then there's.
Speaker 1: Like that's what happened. That's what happened in the end.
Speaker 2: I mean, they they the lawsuit didn't go through, it
Speaker 2: was not proceeded, and it was not you know, judged
Speaker 2: by a judge. It was just they came to an
Speaker 2: agreement and everybody was happy with it. And and you know,
Speaker 2: everyone went their separate ways.
Speaker 4: I suppose it's possible that, like perhaps the executor was just,
Speaker 4: through no fault of their own, ill equipped to handle
Speaker 4: something like this, just made the wrong call. I was
Speaker 4: a little bit more like skeptical and malicious in my
Speaker 4: notes about it, But now that we talk about it, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that's definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1: That we saw.
Speaker 3: I've been the executor.
Speaker 1: I'm change right here live on the nonprofits. I do
Speaker 1: that all the time.
Speaker 3: On the show, I was saying that, yeah, yeah, if
Speaker 3: you made me the executor of a complex uh million
Speaker 3: and a half or two million dollars, I would probably
Speaker 3: screw it up to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: Even though I'm a math guy, I'm definitely not you know,
Speaker 2: figuring out all the jump through all the hoops kind
Speaker 2: of guy. And so yeah, I would definitely mess that
Speaker 2: up too, Eli, I want to stick with you for
Speaker 2: a second here. Jonathan was talking about all all of
Speaker 2: the expense that's involved in this. These organizations had to
Speaker 2: pay tens of thousands of dollars for their legal representation.
Speaker 2: I mean we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, you know from the that's being awarded from
Speaker 2: the trust, and so clearly there was a one could
Speaker 2: strike an attitude of investment towards that too. But do
Speaker 2: you think that, uh, this was a worthy battle, not
Speaker 2: just by a matter of dollars, but for you know,
Speaker 2: they taught the organization's release statements saying that they were
Speaker 2: concerned about the uh, the reputation of their organizations as
Speaker 2: an individual, as a as an individual organization or and
Speaker 2: also as part of a larger group of secular and
Speaker 2: atheist organizations throughout the US. Do you think that they're
Speaker 2: that this kind of thing was was damaging to that
Speaker 2: to that reputation or could it have been avoided somehow
Speaker 2: or or or what?
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts with that?
Speaker 4: I think it certainly can be damaging because if you
Speaker 4: think about like, oh, like you know how many churches
Speaker 4: are like not even churches, villagies, like people do you
Speaker 4: see speaking out against planned parenthood? Right, and then when
Speaker 4: they want to if they're speaking to the right, like
Speaker 4: maybe not aware like the audience, and they're trying to
Speaker 4: garner the opposite of support for planned parent opposition to
Speaker 4: planned parenthood, they're like, well, even the Freedom from Religion
Speaker 4: Foundation is suing planned parenthoods. So even secular people have
Speaker 4: reasons to hate planned parenthood, and they can twist it
Speaker 4: that way without explaining like, well, no, here's the reason
Speaker 4: Planned parent or Freedom of Religion named plant parenthood in
Speaker 4: a lawsuit. It hasn't nothing to do with anything that
Speaker 4: they did wrong. So I think it definitely it can
Speaker 4: be damaging. I think not to the actual relationships, but
Speaker 4: to the perception of the relationships. And now all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, all they're turmoil in the atheist community because
Speaker 4: they're godless, because they sin, because they have orgies.
Speaker 1: Wait, we do, no matter, where's my invitation.
Speaker 4: I haven't been involved, but it certainly sounded like gentlemen,
Speaker 4: really really sounded like I wasn't telling the truth. And
Speaker 4: I said that that's really fun.
Speaker 3: But you had all those signs lying right there. You know.
Speaker 4: I don't know why that happened.
Speaker 1: It's just.
Speaker 2: Boy Eli slack with the with the admissions and the nonprofits.
Speaker 2: He's changing his mind and now he's revealing more than
Speaker 2: he means to you.
Speaker 3: Right, it's that typical tell is looking down like this.
Speaker 1: That's it, right, That's what they say, That's what the
Speaker 1: experts say.
Speaker 3: Your pupils go.
Speaker 4: A popular movie where a character talks about not knowing
Speaker 4: what to do with their hands. That's me with my
Speaker 4: eyeballs basically all.
Speaker 1: The time, right, right, let's go with that. We'll go
Speaker 1: with that answer.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, Jonathan, I wanted to ask you, is
Speaker 2: there anything that we can learn from this? I mean,
Speaker 2: and not just uh, lessons about how we should you know,
Speaker 2: portray ourselves or how we can protect ourselves from from
Speaker 2: this type of thing happening.
Speaker 1: But what about we We we mentioned that.
Speaker 2: Religious groups or or whomever might use this as an
Speaker 2: opportunity to bash the the atheist groups there, and we think,
Speaker 2: and I think we would agree that that would be
Speaker 2: an unfair bashing happening at this point?
Speaker 1: Does it?
Speaker 2: But does it give us warning as as atheists to
Speaker 2: be careful about how we characterize clashes between religious organizations?
Speaker 2: I mean, can we can we use this to make
Speaker 2: ourselves you know, better citizens and better uh, you know,
Speaker 2: people that are in a better position to judge the
Speaker 2: actions of others.
Speaker 1: And that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Is there is there a word of warning in this
Speaker 2: kind of in this story somewhere?
Speaker 3: I think so, I think the way you deal with
Speaker 3: these sorts of situations is with a dose of skepticism.
Speaker 3: When somebody says two people are fighting, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: if you really want to know if they are, you
Speaker 3: look into the details of it, and they will you know,
Speaker 3: the devils in the details if if the details of
Speaker 3: it say they're not really fighting. There's just a disagreement,
Speaker 3: a minor disagreement about some sort of fact. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not it's not like a knockdown, drag out fight,
Speaker 3: or it is a knockdown, drag out fight, and these
Speaker 3: people are going tooth and nail. But you find out,
Speaker 3: you know, you use several sources, dig a little bit
Speaker 3: into it, get some there are people probably doing a
Speaker 3: pretty good job of reporting what's going on. There'll be
Speaker 3: quotes and things like that. Don't trust them, but you know,
Speaker 3: I have a lot of advice for that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But the idea is that in this case, we found
Speaker 3: out by two articles. I read two articles on this
Speaker 3: and uh, and from different sources, and we found out
Speaker 3: that this was amicably done and amicably settled. So it
Speaker 3: wasn't a big you know, it's not the big headline.
Speaker 3: You know, you'll always get the you know, f RFF
Speaker 3: sues the world. Well no, they you know they you know,
Speaker 3: they weren't actually suing most of them. They were only
Speaker 3: suing the executor to disclose ship, you know, so they
Speaker 3: had to do it. Get over yourselves. Now, when two
Speaker 3: religious groups get going, we just have to be careful
Speaker 3: that we're not biasing our analysis of the situation because
Speaker 3: we want to see them fight, right right, you know,
Speaker 3: just don't do that. Take a look, you know, dig
Speaker 3: a little deeper, dig a little bit beyond the surface
Speaker 3: of what you're seeing and the sensational headlines, you know,
Speaker 3: because that's how they sell papers, as we used to say,
Speaker 3: but that's how they get clicks, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And and you know, we're atheists are human too, where
Speaker 2: we can jump on the bandwagon. You know, we see
Speaker 2: groups that we are opposed to seemingly doing things that.
Speaker 1: Are bad or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very easy to start pointing the finger.
Speaker 2: And so maybe this would be a you know, a
Speaker 2: dose of what it's like to experience that from from
Speaker 2: the other side. And you know, so it could be
Speaker 2: just a you know, a warning for us to just
Speaker 2: be wary and be be attentive and as you said,
Speaker 2: be a little bit skeptical, dig a little deeper. Uh, Eli,
Speaker 2: do you have anything to add to that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I had the thought while John was saying it that
Speaker 4: you kind of helped me connect something. If the devil
Speaker 4: is in the details, Christians aren't going to go there.
Speaker 3: They're going to stay away.
Speaker 1: Wow, I think something there. I don't bother the right.
Speaker 3: We have to we have to remember that the Christians
Speaker 3: are people.
Speaker 1: Too, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we got to find a way to get
Speaker 4: the devil somewhere else? Can we put it in? Like,
Speaker 4: can we put them in the big in Georgia or
Speaker 4: the devil.
Speaker 3: Put them beneath the keel of the boat and we're good.
Speaker 4: Details in Georgia.
Speaker 1: I have no comment on that.
Speaker 3: Just be kind people, Just be kind, you know, in
Speaker 3: your dealings with people.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: I think that's a perfect spot for us to wrap
Speaker 2: this one up there, nice nice little cherry on top
Speaker 2: of that one.
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I want to thank you.
Speaker 2: Both for hanging in there with me this week, and
Speaker 2: we've had I think we've had some really good discussions.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Those of you watching, if you like what you see,
Speaker 2: you know, click like and do all this stuff, share
Speaker 2: it and add a comment. If you'd like to, or
Speaker 2: if you have any feedback for us