Heir Conditioning at Open Country

Book excerpt: Heir Conditioning at Open Country shares an autobiography that is a true, Camelot-like tale—a dramatic story of inheritance featuring a Mordred, a Morgan le Fay, and later, thankfully, a Sir Galahad who saved the day in the final hour. Russell Hunter and two of his cousins were left the contents of a twenty-nine-room mansion that had been closed up for twenty years. It had belonged to his cousin Margy’s very wealthy family. Hunter had known the estate as a child when the family was still wealthy and was both grieved and appalled to find out what had become of the home he once knew and loved. When he and his cousins opened the house, they discovered that the contents ran the gamut from pure trash to ancestral dresses, china, silver, glass, and furniture dating from the eighteenth century. As they worked their way through the contents, trying to determine how best to handle them, one of the heirs, in the style of Morgan le Fay, became very greedy about the value of the house’s contents; she attempted to dominate the sale process so that she profited more than the others. The trio of cousins was saved by the Sir Galahad figure who managed the house sale—from which all of the heirs benefited equally.