Pre-paid Tuition Plans

Alan Harwell's housekeeper met me at the door and led me to his oak-paneled study. She was a pretty young thing, early twenties, dark hair and green eyes. Her charcoal skirt was of modest length, but tight enough around her cute ass to make her a pleasure to follow.

Harwell greeted me with the firm handshake of a self-made man. Balding and paunchy, his body testified to every one of his sixty-two years, but his eyes still shone with cunning and power. He invited me to sit down, then asked the housekeeper to shut the door. To my surprise, she did so from the inside, and sat down in the other free chair.

His summons had given me no clue about the business he had to discuss with me, but he had been my client for nearly fifteen years, so naturally I came when he called.

In answer to the question written on my face, he said, "The matter involves Mrs. Colton." He nodded in the direction of the housekeeper, who sat with downcast eyes, hands in her lap, legs demurely crossed. Her simple white blouse projected out a respectable distance, giving a hint of the delights that no doubt lay beneath it.

I nodded and waited for him to continue.

"I was talking with her the other day about the cost of raising children, and in particular, about the outrageous expense of higher education. Mrs. Colton and her husband are thinking about starting a family, and I have been helping her to understand the associated outlays."

I had no idea where he was going with this, but he was paying me $350 an hour to sit and listen, so I sat and listened.

"She has not had the benefit of much education, and neither has her husband, a construction worker. But she recognizes the value of a college education and wants her children to have a better life than she has had."

"Commendable," I said.

"My own kids, on the other hand, got the finest education that money can buy . . . and it didn't do them a damn bit of good. Education is worthless without a strong work ethic. They grew up with all this," he said, gesturing to the trappings of wealth around him. "And they think they are entitled to it -- that they don't have to work for it, like I did."

He didn't need my concurring opinion on what wastrels his grown children were, so I kept silent.

"Colleen and her husband Bob will handle things differently, I'm sure. They work hard, and will teach their kids to work hard."

I glanced at Colleen Colton, expecting to see her smile or blush from his praise, but her expression was strangely grim.

"Which gave me an idea," Harwell continued. "Perhaps we can both get what we want: an elite college education for her kids and a strong work ethic for mine."

I thought it was rather too late for Samantha and Alan, Jr., to develop a strong work ethic and my puzzled expression said as much.

"I don't mean Samantha and Alan, Jr.," he added, reading my thoughts. "The solution I have proposed, and to which she has agreed, is for her to bear me more children, and for me to fund their education. She and her husband will raise them as their own, in their modest but loving home, instilling in them the values I wish Sandra and I had been able to instill in our kids."

"And her husband..."

" ... knows nothing about the plan. And we need to keep it that way, or else the plan won't work."

"I see." I looked over at Mrs. Colton, to get a sense perhaps of her state of mind, but she kept her eyes fixed on the patterns in the luxurious Persian carpet beneath our feet.

"I asked you to meet with us here today," Harwell continued, "so that you can tell us what we need to do, to properly paper the deal."

I nodded, and pondered the situation. The courts have made abundantly clear that a woman has the sole legal right to determine whether to bear children, and with whom. Even her husband has no legal rights in this regard -- though some might say that he has a moral right, a precious and even sacred right, to be the father of his wife's children. It was this supposed right, then, that Mrs. Bob Colton was now seeking to monetize. I could see no legal reason why she couldn't.

Harwell gave me time to think. He knew he had already told me pretty much all I needed to know. I scribbled some notes on my yellow legal pad, which from habit I had pulled from my briefcase the moment I sat down.

"Okay," I said finally. "We first need to create an irrevocable trust, for the benefit of the natural children of Colleen Colton and Alan Harwell, Sr. 'Irrevocable' means," I explained to Mrs. Colton, who was now listening intently, "that he can't change his mind -- that once the money is there, it stays there. We would use the form of a spendthrift trust, so that the corpus could only be used for qualified educational expenses while the child is between the ages of 18 and 25. You don't want the kid to just take the cash and buy a Ferrari and a kilo of coke."

They both smiled at my lame attempt at being lighthearted. It isn't something I do well.

"Second, we need to name a trustee. I would recommend Hawthorne National Bank & Trust. I have a friend there who understands the meaning of discretion."

Harwell nodded. We had used my friend at Hawthorne on several deals before, though never one quite like this.

"Third, we need to document in writing the agreement the two of you have made. In so doing, we need to avoid any semblance of a contract for meretricious services, which would be unenforceable, and could even lead to criminal penalties."

I thought it prudent not to specifically mention the word "prostitution," as it would not have been helpful to the discussion.

"Instead, it should take the form of a settlement agreement concerning child support, custody, etc. Such agreements are drafted every day, of course, for children already born. I see no legal reason why one cannot be drafted for children yet to be conceived. By the way, are we talking here about multiple children?"

"Oh yes," Harwell confirmed, his eyes bright. "Colleen's husband has told her many times that he wants a big family."

I made a note, then continued.

"Fourth, we need to draft a consent form for Mrs. Colton to sign, to enable a paternity test. I would anticipate that the settlement agreement will grant Mr. Harwell the right to select the lab for the testing, and that a positive result will be a condition precedent for funding the trust."

Here, I might have raised the issue of the selection of a suitable clinic for performing the necessary insemination artificially, but I knew without asking that my client would not appreciate the suggestion.

"By the way, how much did you agree to set aside for each child?" I inquired.

"I was thinking maybe one-hundred thousand," said Harwell.

Now Colleen Colton's eyes turned bright, as she contemplated what was surely, for her, a rather large sum.

But I eyed Harwell skeptically. My own children were approaching college age and I had a pretty firm idea of what costs to expect.

Harwell caught my look and reconsidered. "Okay, one-twenty," he conceded.

My expression didn't change. "One-fifty," I said flatly.

"Fine," he said, his frustration thinly veiled.

The money was hardly the issue, for he had plenty to spare. It was just his personality. Part of my job was to rein him in and serve his best interests even when he himself lost sight of what they might be. I was his conscience as well as his counselor.

I nodded, made another note, and continued.

"Fifth, we need to identify an escrow agent, to take the money prior to the performance of any action by Mrs. Colton and hold it until paternity is established, at which time it will be released to fund the trust. The escrow agent is for your protection," I explained to her, "so that you know he can't back out once you have fulfilled your end of the bargain. I can recommend a law school classmate of mine, who works for another firm in town. Completely impartial, and reliable."

"Sounds like a plan. See, I told you he was good," Harwell said enthusiastically to his housekeeper. Then to me: "How quickly can you get the paperwork completed? As you can imagine, we are eager to get started."

Mrs. Colton did not seem so eager, but he surely was. Any man would be.

"Well, it is Friday afternoon. I'm sure I can find a couple of associates who can cancel their weekend plans and get you drafts to review by Monday morning."

"Excellent! I appreciate your assistance, as always." We stood and exchanged another firm handshake.

Mrs. Colton showed me to the front door.

"There is a certain nobility in what you are doing . . . for your children," I told her as I stood on the doorstep.

She gave me a wavering smile. "Thank you. Thanks for everything. Before today, before you described how it could work, I wasn't too sure about this crazy plan."

I nodded. She was as naïve as she was pretty. The whole point of the meeting was for me to provide her the reassurance she needed to go along with Harwell's scheme. It was a familiar routine for him and me: give the other side the feeling that their interests are protected, then screw them.

The only difference was that, this time, the screwing would be physical.

All the way back to the office, I could not escape the mental image of the beautiful Colleen Colton, stark naked, on a sumptuous bed, legs splayed, with Alan Harwell's obese body rutting away on top of her, and filling her womb with his wriggling, fertilizing sperm.

"How'd it go?" asked my ever perky secretary. Like many of the young ladies in our office, she always wore her blouse with one button too many left undone. The sight of her delectable cleavage was a continual distraction, which I strove to endure without complaint. One would have thought that, after having finally married her taxi-driving boyfriend a couple of years ago, she would have begun to dress more modestly.

"A bit out of the ordinary, but nothing we can't handle," I allowed. Then, almost as an aside: "Do you realize how much it costs to send a kid to college these days?"

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