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2. Unreliability of Petitioner's Accounting
There are many reasons to question the reliability of
petitioner's purported accounting of Garry's estate. The
accounting covers thousands of transactions over a 14-year period
from 1979 to 1993. The accounting generally identifies these
items, however, only by the date of receipt or payment and the
name of the claimed payor or payee. In addition, the accounting
was prepared by Donald Hendrickson, not by an outside accountant,
and he did not keep the records on which the accounting was
based. Moreover, petitioner admits that the Hendrickson family
never had a plan to keep a running list of whose money was spent
during the operation of the various Hendrickson family
businesses.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that at
trial respondent proved, by reference to bank records and
canceled checks, that several transactions involving the three
bank accounts used by Garry's estate were either omitted from,
inaccurately described in, or inaccurately classified by,
petitioner's accounting, including one transaction involving
$100,000.
There is a more fundamental problem with petitioner's
accounting, however, than the errors and omissions detected by
respondent. The three bank accounts described in the accounting
were not used solely to receive the joint income, and to pay the
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