Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, June 1, 2019

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THE WORLD AROUND US

Mountain Views-News Saturday, June 1, 2019 

FAMILY MATTERS By Marc Garlett

OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder


GOT A ‘BLENDED FAMILY’? Learn 
From Tom Petty’s Mistakes: His 
Daughters and Widow Are Now 
Locked In Battle Over His Estate

This week Tom Petty’s daughters escalated the battle 
over their late father’s estate by filing a lawsuit against 
Petty’s second wife that seeks $5 million in damages. In 
the lawsuit, Adria Petty and Annakim Violette, claim 
their father’s widow, Dana York Petty, mismanaged their 
father’s estate, depriving them of their rights to determine 
how Petty’s music should be released. 

 Petty died in 2017 of an accidental drug overdose at age 
66. He named Dana as sole trustee of his trust, but the 
terms of the trust give the daughters “equal participation” 
in decisions about how Petty’s catalog is to be used. The 
daughters, who are from Petty’s first marriage, claim the 
terms should be interpreted to mean they get two votes out of three, which would give them majority 
control.

 In April, Dana filed a petition in a Los Angeles court, seeking to put Petty’s catalog under control of a 
professional manager, who would assist the three women in managing the estate’s assets. Dana alleged 
that Adria had made it difficult to conduct business by acting abusive and erratic. 

 Since Petty’s death, two compilations of his music have been released, including “An American Treasure” 
in 2018 and “The Best of Everything” in 2019. Both albums reportedly involved intense conflict between 
Petty’s widow and daughters, over “marketing, promotional, and artistic considerations.”

 In reply to the new lawsuit, Dana’s attorney, Adam Streisand, issued a statement claiming the suit is 
without merit and could potentially harm Petty’s legacy.

Destructive disputes

The fight over Petty’s music demonstrates a sad but true fact about celebrity estate planning. When famous 
artists leave behind extremely valuable—yet highly complex—assets like music rights, contentious court 
disputes often erupt among heirs, even with planning in place. 

 The potential for such disputes is significantly increased for blended families like Petty’s. If you’re in 
a second (or more) marriage, with children from a prior marriage, there is always a risk for conflict, 
as your children and spouse’s interests often aren’t aligned. In such cases, it’s essential to plan well in 
advance to reduce the possibility for conflict and confusion.

 Petty did the right thing by creating a trust to control his music catalog, but the lawsuit centers around 
the terms of his trust and how those terms divide control of his assets. While it’s unclear exactly what 
the trust stipulates, it appears the terms giving the daughters “equal participation” with his widow in 
decisions over Petty’s catalog are somewhat ambiguous. The daughters contend the terms amount to 
three equal votes, but his widow obviously disagrees. 

Reduce conflict with clear terms and communication

It’s critical that your trust contain clear and unambiguous terms that spell out the beneficiaries’ exact 
rights, along with the exact rights and responsibilities of the trustee. Such precise terms help ensure all 
parties know exactly what you intended when setting up the trust. 

 What’s more, you should also communicate your wishes to your loved ones while you’re still alive, 
rather than relying on a written document that only becomes operative when you die or should you 
become incapacitated. Sharing your intentions and hopes for the future can go a long way in preventing 
disagreements over what you “really” wanted.

For the love of your family

While such conflicts frequently erupt among families of the rich and famous like Petty, they can occur 
over anyone’s estate, regardless of its value. When planning your estate, make sure to work with an 
attorney who’s willing and able to make an effort above and beyond simply drafting legal documents for 
you. That alone can dramatically reduce the chances of conflict over your estate and bring your family 
closer at the same time. And if you have a blended family (meaning children from a prior marriage), 
take your time and do things right so your family doesn’t end up bitter and embattled, like Tom Petty’s.

Dedicated to empowering your family, building your wealth and defining your legacy,

A local attorney and father, Marc Garlett is on a mission to help parents 
protect what they love most. His office is located at 55 Auburn Avenue, 
Sierra Madre, CA 91024. Schedule an appointment to sit down and talk 
about ensuring a legacy of love and financial security for your family by 
calling 626.355.4000 or visit www.GarlettLaw.com for more information.

WHAT IS A DAY 
OFF, REALLY? 

I’m not one who gets excited 
about holidays. If up 
to me there would be one 
holiday per month, and 
that’s it.

The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage loves 
holidays, no matter what it is. For her it is a time 
to have a “Day Off.” If anybody knows how to 
celebrate a day off it is her.

By January, she has all the holidays noted on her 
calendar and what she is going to do on those 
hol-idays.

I do not even want to celebrate my birthday. 
With all my birthdays, you would think I would 
get tired of celebrating them. And, I have. The 
birthday just reminds you are getting older. I do 
not need that kind of reminder; the pain in my 
body does that for me.

The problem with my birthday is it is two days 
before my wife’s birthday. I am not quite sure 
how I planned that, but if I had to do it over 
again, I am not sure our birthdays would be that 
close.

In order for her to celebrate her birthday, I must 
celebrate my birthday. And, oh boy, is that a 
chal-lenge for me. After as many birthdays as I 
have had, I do not know what I could do differently 
in celebrating my next birthday. Of course, 
I do not have to think this through; I have someone 
in our residence that takes care of this.

A certain holiday was coming up and my wife 
said to me very gingerly, “What are we going to 
do on our day off?”

My response was, “Huh?”

“You know,” she said , “this Thursday we are having 
a holiday and so it is a day off for us. So, what 
are we going to do?”

I knew what I wanted to do, but I was not going 
to express it in audible words.

“Well,” I said as thoughtfully as I could, “I need 
to do some more work on the book I’m writing 
now.” Then I smiled at her.

Looking at me with one of “those looks,” and 
both hands on her hips, she said, “Absolutely 
not. Thursday is a day off and we are going to 
take the day off. End of the subject.”

When she says “End of the subject,” it really 
means it is the end and the subject is settled.

In nervous anticipation, I was looking forward 
to “our day off.”

I’m not quite sure what that means. For me every 
day I’m off my mark, so to speak. However, 
that is not what she was talking about.

The best days of my life are when I am working 
on one of my projects. The day seems to go by so 
quickly when I am doing what I love.

My wife recently informed me that at my age 
I need to start slowing down. I told her that I 
would slow down in my walking, but that was 
not what she meant.

“You work too much, you need to take time off 
every once in a while.”

Because I do not say something, does not mean 
I am not thinking of something. What I wanted 
to ask her at the time was, “Would you please explain 
to me what ‘once in a while’ means? What 
day of the week is it?”

However, I kept the thought to myself and for 
good reasons.

According to her definition of “day off” it is doing 
things that you really love that you cannot 
do on a workday.

When I wore a younger man’s suit, many things 
I could do would fit her category. Since I have 
traded the younger man’s suit for a more mature 
man’s suit, many things I cannot do even if 
I wanted to.

I wrestle with this “day off syndrome” that seems 
to occupy my wife’s mind. Every time I take a 
day off, all I can think of is the work I could be 
doing. That does not make me a happy camper, 
to say the least.

Getting older, I have come to appreciate certain 
variations in life. I am not trying to live yesterday 
because that is past. I am trying to learn 
how to live today and if it were not for my wife, I 
would not know what that means.

My father once told me, “Son, remember this. 
If your wife is happy, everybody in the house is 
happy.” At the time, I did not understand what 
he meant. After years of living with the wife, I 
dis-covered exactly what he meant.

So, after so many years of being married, I have 
discovered what this “Day Off” really means. I 
wish I would have seen this when I was younger. 
However, I am so glad I have finally come to 
terms with what it really means.

A “Day Off” to put it very simply, is a day to 
spend with your wife. No other agenda on my 
sched-ule, but what is making her happy. We 
spend a day together and if she is happy then the 
rest of the week is a melody of happiness.

I wonder if this is what Solomon was thinking of 
when he wrote, “She is a tree of life to them that 
lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that 
retaineth her” (Proverbs 3:18). 

I have discovered a day off with my wife is the 
supreme recipe for a happy day.

Dr. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of 
God Fellowship, and lives with the Gracious 
Mistress of the Parsonage in Ocala, FL. Call him 
at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.
net. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.
com.

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

All Things By Jeff Brown

BACKSTAGE PASS by Paul Stanley 

The bestselling author and front man and rhythm guitarist of KISS grants 
fans an all-access backstage pass to his personal life and shows them how to 
pursue a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of their own, offering hard-won advice from 
a music legend. In this follow-up to his popular bestseller Face the Music, 
the Starchild takes us be-hind the scenes, revealing what he’s learned from a 
lifetime as the driving force of KISS, and how he brings his unique sensibility 
not only to his music career but to every area of his life—from business 
to parenting to health and happiness. Back-stage Pass takes you beyond the 
makeup as Paul shares fascinating details about his life—his fitness routine, 
philosophy, business principles, how he maintains his inspiration, passion, 
and joy after nearly 50 years of mega success including selling out tours, 
100 million albums sold and an art career that has amassed over 10 mil-
lion dollars in sales. Divulging more true stories of the Rock & Roll Hall 
of Famer’s relationships, hardships, and pivotal moments, it also contains 
intimate four-color, never-before-seen photos from Paul’s personal collection, 
and offers surprising lessons on the discipline and hard work that have 
made him one of the healthiest and most successful rock ‘n’ roll icons in history. This is the book for fans 
who love living large, but also want to take control and move ahead in every-day life. Paul shows you how 
you can rock ‘n’ roll all night and party every day—without missing a beat.

BOY'S LIFE by Robert McCammon 

Don’t miss this little masterpiece from bestselling award-winning author Robert 
McCammon. Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old 
Cory Mackenson—a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are 
forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge 
into a lake—and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a 
terrible vision of death that will haunt him forever. As Cory struggles to understand 
his father’s pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil 
that are manifested in Zephyr. From an ancient, mystical woman who can hear 
the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must 
confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown—for his father’s 
sanity and his own life hang in the balance. A wonderful book. Mystery, fantasy, 
family love, and being young again through Cory's eyes.

REFLECTIONS OF THE ONE LIFE: DAILY POINTERS TO 
ENLIGHTENMENT by Scott Kiloby 

Reflections on the One Life is a book of daily expressions or pointers to spiritual 
awakening—one pointer for each day of the year. The clarity is astounding. 
This demystifies spiritual awakening, strips it of all fundamentalism, and 
presents it in a clear and easy-to-read way. This is about the timeless presence 
that you already are. Each pointer peels away beliefs, positions, and ideas 
about spirituality, includ-ing the idea that you exist as a separate self, only to 
reveal—in the end—that nothing is excluded. Its central message is that there 
is only One Life appearing in a myriad of forms. You are that One Life. This is 
when the distinctions between absolute and relative, form and formlessness, 
timelessness and time, no self and self, One and many, and all other boundaries 
collapse into a great and loving mys-tery that Scott calls 'This‘. The 3 
reviews are from Amazon.com.

THE MYSTERY!

In The Week's office, the country's newspapers are laid out in a line each day along a counter. 
One day last week, the same spooky image stared out from every front page, like a cosmic eyeball, 
the first every "photo" of a black hole. (This supermassive black hole is some 55 million 
light-years from Earth and is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun.")It's an achievement once 
thought impossible, given that black hole exert such monstrous gravity that they swallow light 
itself. To see the unseeable, it took 200 scientists on four continents using 8 radio telescopes, 
synchronized so that they function like one giant radio dish the size of earth. 

Even Einstein, whose theories pre-dicted black holes, initially doubted something so outlandish 
could exist. Now as-tronomers have captured what one looks like: a radiant orange red ring 
of super-heated gas swirling around an enormous void-the event horizon-where all matter and 
energy is sucked into no-one knows where. 

The value of feats like this are not entire-ly scientific: they remind us that human beings are 
not always petty, small and mean, and that at our collaborative best,Homo Sapiens is capable of 
magnificent things. Over the last century, science has shown that our universe is a far stranger 
place than our everyday experience would suggest. Space itself is curved and warped by mass. 
Time slows down on an object the faster it travels. Electrons act as both particles and waves. 
Entangled particles seem to instantly know and react to what happens to their partners across 
vast distances. At a quantum level, there is no empty space: Particles constantly pop in and out 
of existence, creating an ephemeral quantum "foam.” 

At the other end of the scale, there are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe, each containing 
billions of stars and probably more than a few planets where intelli-gent life has evolved 
and is puzzling over the same questions as we are. 

The more we discover, the more is becomes clear that our certainties, whatever they may be, are 
built on illusions. We live in a great mystery. William Falk, Editor in chief of The Week.


THE MISSING PAGE

Real Life Tips from LIfe's Instruction Manual

LIVING FROM A POINT OF POWER

The concept that thoughts become things is new for many people 
that have never stopped to ponder creation, but when we pause to 
consider it isn't that foreign. The clothes that adorn our bodies 
and chairs that support our rest were first a thought in a designer's 
mind. Our homes started in the mind of an architect before they 
graced the pages of a blueprint.

I hope that you find this as exciting as I do! Whenever we allow 
ourselves to dream and imagine we are tapping into our creative 
powers. 

The next step to realization is the write that idea down. In reducing our thoughts to writing, we 
gain greater clarity. When we allow ourselves to dream, we ignite a fire to become something 
new, a bigger version of ourselves; this is especially true when we imagine accomplishing a task 
beyond our current expertise. A great way to build momentum is to ask yourself, "what's one 
step I can take that will move this idea forward?" My coaching programs help clients move from 
dreamer to builder, and many are surprised how quickly their goals are accomplished using my 
system.

However, the most crucial aspect of understanding our creative power is not with how easily and 
effortlessly clients change their outward life experiences, but instead, the inner peace that comes 
with an awareness practice.

Clients begin to move away from a "Life is happening TO me " mindset to a more harmonious 
"Life happens THROUGH me" mindset.

Instead of thinking things like "he makes me feel...", or 

"she makes me so mad, " or saying, " I have to do x, y, or z." 

My happiest, most empowered clients recognize their choices in their lives and retire their victim-
hood mindset. They realize that they cannot control every circumstance, but they can direct 
their responses and decide how they will feel about the events that occur in their lives.

Is there an area that you have been acting like a victim?

What would recognizing your point of power mean to your life? 

Lori A. Harris is a lawyer and Life Mastery consultant. 

Learn more about her and her services at www.loriaharris.com


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com