May 13, 1994

Liebe Margrit,

Enclosed is a printout of computer model of the amount of the monetary values by which my activities increased Mutti's and Papa's assets and the Meyer Family Trust #2 of which you are beneficiary.

I ask you to consider two things that I did for Mutti and Papa.  The first is a contract which I made with the Board of American Missions in 1955, which secured for them the use of the house and of the Medical Center for the rest of their lives. As you probably know, the church reneged on that contract. It is hard for me to imagine how Mutti and Papa would have adjusted if in 1958, they had lost the Medical Center and their house to the Waters, whether they would have paid rent to the Waters, whether they would have built their own house in Konnarock, whether they would have moved to Damascus or Marion or elsewhere, whether Papa would have succeeded at age 59 in building a new medical practice in a strange community, whether they would have had physical or mental breakdowns, whether they would have committed suicide . . . who knows, who can say.

What happened instead was that on the basis of the contract which I had made, they sued the church and they won the lawsuit.  Whatever other benefits the contract might have had for them, it saved them paying rent for their house and for the Medical Center.  It seems ridiculous, given all the benefits they derived from the contract, to focus only on the rent that I saved them, but such is the nature of accounting and of economics.  In order to calculate the present value of the rent which they did not have to pay, one need only make an assumption about the rate of return on the rental sums payable each month and about the amount of the monthly payment.

I have designed the model, so that these and all other parameters can be adjusted ad libitum.  I have chosen what I consider a modest return on assets of 6%.  The model, as I have printed it out, makes 30 incremental assumptions, and you can take your pick.  In assumption (1) of the model, I have set the value of rent for the house from 1958 to 1986 to be $100.00 per month, and for the Medical Center from 1958 to 1968 likewise to be $100.00 per month.  I don't know the exact year they stopped using the Medical Center, but we can look it up in Konnarock, if you like.  Each subsequent assumption increases the monthly rent by $5, so that assumption (30) postulates rent to be $245 a month each for the Medical Center and for the house.

The second contribution which I have included in the model is the care of Mutti and Papa from 1986 through 1989.  I have assumed that Papa would have required six months of nursing home care and that Mutti would have required three years of nursing home care. In assumption (1) of the model, I postulate that such care would have cost $20000 per person per year. Each subsequent assumption increases the costs by $1000.00 so that assumption (30) postulates hypothetical nursing home charges of $49000.00 per person per year, which seem to me not unreasonable.

The third contribution which I have included is the house itself, since this would surely have been lost to them without my contract.  Assumption (1) postulates a value of $100000, which increases by $5000 for each subsequent year. By assumption (10) the value of the house is postulated at 145000, which is the amount for which it is listed in the inventory of the estate.

I have also calculated the values of the administrators and trustees fees which I have waived.  These values I have adapted from schedules published by Cambridge Trust Company. I have not made any estimates of legal fees which an institutional trustee or administrator would have expended.

Finally I have listed the expenses of maintaining the house in Konnarock subsequent to Muttis death.  This listing does not include the value of my own services.

I ask you to look over these figures and make some estimates of your own. I include the source code to my model, perhaps some of your friends will run it for you with different assumptions. Or I should certainly be pleased to do so. All you need to tell me is what you think the rental for the house, the rental for the Medical Center and the costs of nursing home care with a private room and a 16 hr/day special duty attendants would have been for the years in question.

Look for a moment at the table labeled assumption (10).  There the valuation of the house is $145000, which is the figure I used in the estate accounting.  The rent for the Medical Center and for the house is estimated at $145 a month each, which in Konnarock vernacular seems to me to be very reasonable. Nursing home care such as Mutti and Papa received is carried at $29000.00 per year, which seems to me also to be very reasonable if it is not indeed too low. If these sums had been paid out of Muttis and Papas assets, there would today be a debit in the trust of $5800.00.  Rightly or wrongly, I am convinced that if I had not done for Mutti and Papa what I did, there wouldn't be any trust.

I turn now to your bequest of the remainder of your annuity to Billy and Hannah. As you know, I have no information as to the amount of your pension or of its present value, which I estimate to be $250,000. If you live another 19 years, Billy and Hannah will get nothing; but it is also possible that you will have an accident or contract an illness which will require in a matter of months or of a few years, payments from the trust such that the trust will be exhausted.  Then if as a result of this accident or illness you die before the twenty year term of your annuity expires, a not implausible assumption, you will have spent all the money which I in effect gave Mutti and Papa to give to you, and all the money which I in effect gave you directly; and you will leave the assets which are yours, large or small as they may be, to Billy and Hannah.

I choose not to pass judgment on the propriety of your action.  Maybe Billy and Hannah need the money; maybe you have an obligation to take money from Margaret and Klemens, from Rebekah, Nathaniel and Benjamin and give it to Billy and Hannah or children of other friends of yours.  Maybe what you want to do is right.  I am certainly not angry. And I shall certainly not try to persuade you to change the benficiaries of your annuity. The question between us is, what do we do next. For me the answer is simple: We look at our promises.  I promised you in the past that you should have unfettered access to your money. I want you to agree to a rescission of that promise to the extent that it shall become legally unenforceable, because if it were legally enforceable, your creditors, - those whom you might come to owe money because you had an accident or made a bad business decision - would have access also to money which you have promised me. I understood you to have promised me not to use money which I have contributed to Muttis and Papas estate without my concurrence. I ask that we agree upon a formal implementation of that promise.  to reach an agreement upon the amount in dollars and cents that you will not use without my consent.  That is why I have made the model, if you don't agree with it, tell me what is wrong about it.  I am very much open to your suggestions.

I ask you to do three things for me.
1) Please write to me and tell me, in the light of the model I have made, or in the light of any other algorithm that seems appropriate to you, the exact amount which you consider my contribution to Muttis and Papas estate, and

2) Please confirm the promise which I believe you have made to me not to expend without my consent and not assign to others without my consent funds which you have acknowledged to flow from my contribution to Muttis and Papas estate.

3) Please sign the enclosed amendment to the trust which makes it possible for you to terminate or amend the trust only with my consent and thereby makes it impossible for third paties to force you to pay over the assets of the trust to them.