It might be just my perception, but it seems as though the phones don't ring in my office as much in late July and August as they do at other times of year. I suppose that should not surprise me, as the majority of our work is in the area of estate planning, trusts, probate and what is now called "elder law," which is to say death, taxes, and incapacity.

As an old friend of mine used to say, who doesn't want to go into a lawyer's office on a nice summer day and talk about those things?

Most of our clients own homes, and many own other real estate as well, so our work typically involves helping clients plan for how this property should be dealt with at their death (and before). We also help trust and estate administrators manage such assets in an estate or trust. Many different types of issues arise, some more often than we would like.

One area of controversy can arise when parents leave real property to children as tenants in common, so that the group owns the property together and each child has equal rights in it. This is too often a recipe for disaster. Unless all of the beneficiaries agree on how the property is to be owned or managed, one or more of them will often find their way to a lawyer's office to discuss what can be done.

Of course, the first avenue is to try to reach a mutual agreement. But if this is not possible, the lawyer will tell the client that a resolution can probably be found in a suit of partition. In this action, one of the owners sues the others and seeks a court order allowing the sale of the property.

Relationships between siblings can be seriously weakened and sometimes destroyed as a result of partition suits. In one recent case, I was appointed by the court to act as committee of sale for a property that was ordered sold by the court in a partition suit. The family had not been able to agree on what to do with the property, nor could they agree on a price for which one family member could buy the other out. The suit was brought at considerable expense, and I suspect the property was sold for less than if the property been marketed in the usual fashion. The family members attended the auction but ignored one another, which may have been the best thing that could have happened. That old saying about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face comes to mind.

Another problem we see more often than we'd like arises when a probate is done for the estate of a deceased person, but inadequate care is taken in looking at the title to the real property involved. Incorrect legal descriptions are attached to certificates of devise, or other missteps occur. So when an heir or surviving spouse goes to either sell or mortgage a property, the problem comes to light and costly delays result.

This topic came to mind after I took a week's vacation on a lovely little lake in Maine, very close to a cottage that an uncle of mine owned years ago. I wrote a column that appeared in this newspaper just about a year ago on the topic of "how to save the family cottage" so that a wonderful vacation property might continue to be held in a family and passed down to one's descendants. That column was largely inspired by my uncle's cottage, where so many good times were had by so many people for a good 30 years.

The lake remained as lovely as it was those years ago. It has not been taken over by the Jet Ski crowd, although one or two of them were out on the water; thankfully, they seem to be quieter than they were years ago.

I paddled by my uncle's cottage in my kayak one day, and by an amazing stroke of luck I met the current owners as they lounged outside on their boat. They kindly offered to give me a tour of the old place. These folks have owned the cottage for about 30 years, and they bought it not from my uncle but from an intervening owner. However, they did know my uncle and his family.

I was surprised to see that the cottage is still as it was in the old days in most regards, although it has been remodeled in certain ways. The screen door still slams when it closes unless you hold it with your hand and guide it.

As lovely as this cottage is, it is not different from many of the other cottages on the lake. It is now smaller than many of the others, which have been expanded. I was very surprised to see how tiny the rooms were, since I remembered them as being much larger. I told the owner that my uncle had a plaque on the wall which recited Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous, "The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." When I asked her if she knew what happened to it, she answered that she was an antiques dealer and had sold it a couple of years ago.

Together with other family, I have sometimes bemoaned the fact that we didn't have the presence of mind to all chip in and buy the cottage when my uncle chose to sell it. But in light of the problems I have seen arise in families where a property is owned jointly by many parties, I now wonder if we would have come to grief if we had done that.

I also came to feel even more strongly than I had before that the important thing about the cottage, what made it so special, was not the cottage. Nor was it the beautiful lake upon which it sat. Rather, it was the people who were there.

Jim  Young  is  a  partner  in  Andrews  & Young  P.C.,  which  has  offices  in  Waterford  and  Groton,  and  has  been  serving the  southeastern  Connecticut  area  since 1987. Copies of his HomeSource columns can be found on the firm's website, andrewsandyoung.com. The statements made in this particular column are not intended to be taken as legal advice for any particular fact situation. Consult with an attorney.