Ethics 101

Intention:  A stretching or bending of the mind toward an object.

More lessons from the Ethics Department . . .  (Ed. Note: I don't know where this department is located - apparently I went to schools that defunded the ethics department or never established one in the first place).

I've written at length about a sum of money that my dear sister spirited out of one of my dad's checking accounts - allegedly with his approval - under the cloak of night, behind my back and behind closed doors, in a For Your Eyes Only - Top Secret kind of transaction.  Because I have some serious training in the Don't Act Like An Ass ALL of the Time Department I was able to process through this with a minimum of damage, roughly in the following manner: get pissed; escalate this status to very pissed; sleep on it without . . . you know . . . talking; seek counsel from other wiser souls; make a judgment right out of the Do You Want to be Right or Do You Want to be Happy Department; move on with one's life.  I did this with the firm belief that my sister snagged some of my money and she snagged it believing her snag would go undetected.  I can still hear the stress in her voice as she tried to explain - flimsily - why this went down.  I've always said that the worst thing about lying is that you can be caught in the lie.  Otherwise, I have no strong objection to lying, befitting a tremendously talented liar who has practiced and perfected his craft over long periods of time.

So in the world of money the sum we're talking about is a sum I can afford but a not insignificant sum - I believe all of us need to look at money in the harsh, unforgiving, factual glare of an accountant's accountant lamp.  There are, for each of us, amounts of money that are small enough to ignore, amounts on the other end of the spectrum, and amounts in between.  The trouble for me is that if I think it's my money then I'm never comfortable not having it.  I've only learned in The Program how to process this in a somewhat healthy manner.

The ethical question, you ask?  I received a check from a hitherto undiscovered life insurance policy my father held, a not insignificant amount but an amount far lower than the amount I was fucking screwed out of . . . er . . . I mean that my father wanted my sister to have.  Every asset dad had has to be accounted for  in the court system and I mean copy of the check and copy of the bank statement and copy of the bill and blah blah blah.  And because the estate was opened with a list of assets any new ones require that we submit all of this new shit WITH a "Previously Unknown Asset" form.  This keeps the estate open and it allows our lawyer to keep charging whatever unconscionable hourly rate he's charging.

Thusly, I deposited this money in my own personal checking account to avoid jumping through hoops while securing some kind of return on the money.  Now, do I tell my sister.  My intention is to do just that.