Family Feud

      The mother faced her final days with resolution.  She knew the end would soon rear its ugly head, but she hoped her sons, Milo and Abner, could agree soon on how to divide the little bit left of her worldly possessions so she could go peacefully to her reward secure in the knowledge that the siblings would not tear each other apart.

       Milo, the elder brother, had taken mother into his home three years before and cared for her throughout her long bout with cancer. She stubbornly refused to go into “that prison for the dying with the disgusting smell of hospital antiseptics and human waste,” and insisted on remaining with “her best boy.”

      Abner didn’t just sit on the sidelines, even though his mother never disguised her favoritism for his older sibling. The more successful of the two, he had built a thriving hardware business from the ground up, and graciously paid for most of his mother’s expenses not covered by her medical plan. 

    When their mother revealed to whom she would leave her estate, the two brothers began to engage in constant verbal, and sometimes physical, combat about how each of them deserved a larger share.

     Yes, mother had drawn up a will, but each of the brothers accused the other of mentally twisting her arm to get her to deprive him of the portion of the $100,000 they felt they had earned. 

    That document left an equal amount to each of the siblings, but neither of them accepted its terms. This resulted in profanity-laden arguments at every family event, continuingly upsetting the ailing matriarch and even resulting in fist fights between the two brothers, each backed by their own spouses and children.

    The fighting continued well after their mother left this world six months later, dying heartbroken that the sons she had loved more than life itself continued sparring over the nestegg she and her late husband had slaved to accumulate in their small business. 

    Everything seemed to come to a head one afternoon when Milo took a break from his tedious role as a caretaker and left a part-time nurse in charge. When the nurse took a break for lunch, Abner broke a window in his brother’s home and tried to get inside to search for what he called the real will, leaving him the greater share believed he had earned.

      The police responded and Milo came rushing home in a rage.  They separated the brothers just before they came to blows again.  The older brother failed to press charges, but warned, “you are skating on very thin ice.  One more incident like this and the police will arrive too late to save you.”          

    Incidents like this continued for months and became increasingly more serious, until the brothers’ two wives decided to look for someone to intervene and mediate the dispute. They feared that, without a solution, the brothers or someone close to them could get hurt or even killed.

   In one final attempt, the spouses brought in clergymen from the church both of their husbands attended. The ministers spent months counseling the brothers in the hopes that they could bring a meeting of the minds. After a short period of peace, the arguments and physical confrontations again heated up.

    Frustrated with this route, the wives signed their husbands up for several sessions with a number of expensive conflict resolution professionals. Even after the brothers saw a substantial portion of what remained of their inheritances eaten up by counseling fees the situation still seemed hopeless.

       Finally, the sisters-in-law almost threw up their hands in disgust and defeat. They feared the rest of their lives would consist of conflict that might eventually tear the families apart and result in serious property damage or possible jail time. 

    Then, one morning Abner’s wife Jane looked through the internet when she came across a story about the Scared Straight Program, which brought seemingly incorrigible youth into the state prison and, using fear, intimidation and hostility, turned the young charges away from lives of crime.

      She called the local chapter of the group and asked if they would use their techniques to resolve the conflict between the two brothers.

     The local sheriff, who founded the local chapter of the group, told Jane that he believed a full-impact program could prove too radical for her situation but promised to arrange for a less intensive version that could help.

        The sheriff touched base with his colleagues in the program and arranged for two model prisoners who had led group presentations in the past to be let out on temporary work release and meet him at a local bowling alley. 

      Jane and Milo’s wife Madge invited their husbands to meet the sheriff and a few friends for a friendly competition. They banked on this last-ditch effort to bring a truce in the war of the brotherhood.

     After only a few frames of bowling, Milo and Abner were at each other’s throats, each accusing the other of cheating while keeping score. The trio of new buddies then took the brothers into a meeting room in the bowling alley, where they ran a video of one of their recent prison sessions.

      “Listen,” the sheriff said after revealing the true identities of himself and those he had brought with him, “if you two don’t settle your differences and act like human beings we are going to take you over to the local lockup and have some of the prisoners in our program give you a taste of what they gave to our local delinquents in the Scared Straight Program you just witnessed. I guarantee their solutions to your minor family dispute will completely wipe out any taste you still have left for this constant personal warfare.

         The brothers finally sat down with some pro-bono attorneys associated with Scared Straight who had them sign agreements which outlined the steps each of them pledged to take to comply with their mothers’ will. They also gave their consent to do whatever they needed to peacefully resolve their differences.