OPINION: Battle over $43 million estate explodes in vitriol

July 29--Headline: Legless, Lonely Rich Guy Leaves Millions to Farmhands, Caretaker, Banker.

Kicker: IRS agent who audited man's tax return married, then deserted millionaire now fighting bank to control $43 million estate.

Is this a fairy tale? Is it fake news? Folks, this is Florida. You know in your heart it's true.

The estranged wife of the late citrus grower and rancher Bill Bland, whose father helped start what became SunTrust Banks, is locked in a vicious battle with the bank handling his estate, and the sordid fight is laid out in court documents.

"This is not what Mr. Bland wanted," said attorney Derek Schroth in polite understatement. The Eustis lawyer represents the very staid First National Bank of Mount Dora, which is handling two trusts and the estate Bland left.

Bland, acknowledged by friends as an imperious old gent, died at 84 in November in hospice. Complications from diabetes left him suffering for months after amputations. "A hard man with a soft soul" is how one friend at First National described him.

He'd have had a profane word or two to say about the public fight over what boils down to this: Should his estranged wife be able to spend some of the principal of his estate, not just the $800,000 annual income from it? Or should the conservative bank keeping managing the trust, which almost certainly then would pass intact to the Mount Dora Community Trust on her death?

Bland intended for the money go to the Community Trust to support various charity works. What a marvelous gift to the community.

But we digress.

This strange tale began when Bland received a demand from IRS agent Mary Jane Brooks to meet and discuss the tax return for Blandford Groves, Inc., Bland's citrus and ranch operation. It was April 15, 2002, just four months after Bland had lost his beloved wife, Lois.

Seven months after that portentous first meeting, Bland married his auditor at a beach wedding. He was 70, she was 50. Friends worried about the age difference and the quick courtship. But the grouchy, set-in-his-ways Bland was smitten, giddily toasting his bride with a phrase to the effect, "What's mine is hers."

Never were truer words spoken.

The pair lived together six years before Mary Jane left in 2008. Afterward, they sometimes saw one another, and a quarrel in June 2016 was the last face-to-face meeting before he died, according to court documents. She ended their relationship with what lawyers called "a sophomoric Dear John letter" in August 2016, saying, "I am completely broken. To call or speak to you now is impossible to bear."

She asked him to think of her fondly and continue to support her.

Bland died a couple months later in hospice. At his death, he had no relationship with either of his two daughters or with Mary Jane or her daughter, to whom he had given $570,000 in 2015 to buy a house.

Bland's will and trusts gave his ranch manager, farm hand and caretaker $2.3 million altogether. His longtime friend Jack Pease III, chairman of the board of the bank directors, received several vehicles and a boat, and he was to inherit the 6,800-square-foot mansion just outside Mount Dora along with its contents, together valued at more than $1.3 million. His daughters each got $1 million and his stepdaughter $100,000.

The bulk of the assets and investments, however, were to be held in a trust managed solely by the bank and their income was to go to Mary Jane -- but not their management. Two months before he died, Bland amended the terms of the largest trust -- it was the only one he could legally change -- to take control away from Mary Jane. She didn't like it.

The widow filed a lawsuit in Orange County circuit court claiming Bland's bankers used "undue influence" to persuade him to cut her out of the management of the fortune or, she stated, her late husband was not competent to change his will. Either way, his change in August should be overturned, she argued. She cited his shaky signature as evidence.

Court documents

Bland's widow Mary Jane has argued to the court that Bland wasn't competent to change his will and trusts, and she is citing the signature above as evidence.

Bland's widow Mary Jane has argued to the court that Bland wasn't competent to change his will and trusts, and she is citing the signature above as evidence. (Court documents)

Mary Jane's lawsuit accuses the bank of a myriad of conflicts of interest, including that Pease improperly accepted the bequest from Bland, and that the bank was not looking after her best interest or it would have sold the bank stock it holds, which makes up 25 percent of the value of the estate, to generate a higher income. She initially agreed to give Pease the home as her late husband directed in his will, then declined to sign over her interest.

The court action shook the vaults at First National, which never since it opened its doors in 1925 had been sued over how it managed a trust. The bank retaliated by filing a similar suit in Lake County, stating that Bland was mentally competent to the end. Schroth said that Pease got an OK from his board of directors to accept the bequest from Bland. And, he said, the bank kept its stock because Bland specifically ordered the trust to do so.

Mary Jane is demanding the bank resign as trustee. If she managed the trust herself, or had a more sympathetic trustee, she could dump the bank stock and dip into at least some of the principal. That bothers the bankers, who know that Bland wanted his fortune to take care of his widow during her life, then be used for good works in the community.

There's more, but the point is clear. Mary Jane didn't respond to a request to discuss the suits, and John Pease IV, Pease's son and the vice president for the trust operation, declined to comment, citing respect for the bank's late client.

Now what?

The parties have put more than a half-dozen unresolved motions on hold for 45 days and have filed pleadings indicating they will negotiate to see whether they can settle the dispute. Here's hoping that it's settled in a way that allows the Community Trust to get Bland's bequest intact -- it's what Bland wanted, and after all, it was his family's money.

Surely, Mary Jane can scrape by on $800,000 a year.

[email protected].

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