I got a letter from Steve McCusker on Friday, asking for forbearance on a large payment I am owed.

The problem is, I don't think he wrote the letter.

My regular attorney is on vacation, so I took the letter to another attorney that I know because I wanted to be sure I was responding in a reasonable way.  

Unlike my regular attorney Randy, this attorney does not know Steve.  The first words out of her mouth after reading the letter were, "Is he an illiterate?".  The syntax and grammar are so tangled that the letter is difficult to understand.

Well, Steve is most definitely not "an illiterate".  Unless he has somehow forgotten his education in the last few years, it appears the letter wasn't written by him, but instead by Liz McCusker.

It's a truly weird letter.  About one-third of it is devoted to making sure I don't contact Steve directly.  This has been a long-term goal of hers----that is, to be in control of any correspondence between Steve and me.  I really don't care to have any "personal" correspondence with him.  For over 3 decades I had valued his friendship, but that horse left the barn years ago.  He proved to be a liar (particularly to poor Liz) and a person who uses others.  With "friends" like that, who needs enemies?

Yet we occasionally need contact in order to resolve our legal issues.  Writing letters back and forth for months to resolve something that could be done in 5 minutes on the phone (or via email if he or I wishes to have a paper-trail) is a ridiculous waste of time.  If Liz thought this through, she would understand that what she is doing is prolonging my contact with Steve.

I am willing to bet that I am more unhappy when I need to deal with Steve than she is about my having to do so.  


Still, the letter is so poorly written that I have to laugh.  Doesn't she have any idea what a business letter should look like?  The nexus of the letter is the statement that he is unable to pay me-------which would be because he blew through the money he made last year, in spite of it being a very significant percentage higher than usual.