“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” — Psalm 146:3
SUMMARY 3 — DRAMA REVISED (LEO AS THE PRESSURING FORCE)
The heart of the drama begins not in the courthouse but inside the family itself. After Helen’s death, her will created a trust meant to protect her daughters and preserve her assets across time. But Leo Peters had other plans. Claiming that he needed the trust assets to keep the butter company afloat, he repeatedly pushed, persuaded, and ultimately pressured his daughters to surrender what their mother had meant for them. Some resisted—quietly, cautiously, emotionally torn—but over time each one caved under Leo’s authority, hoping that honoring their father would lead to fairness later. They believed him when he said he would “remember all the children in the end.” He didn’t.
By 1981, the tension breaks the surface. Judge Stoppels’s letter exposes how irregular the family’s internal arrangements had become. The daughters had signed documents at Leo’s urging, but the court reminds them the trust cannot simply be dismantled because they said so. Grandchildren, minors, unborn heirs all had rights protected by law—rights Leo had pushed past in his quest for flexibility and control. The court’s tone signals the first outside recognition that something about this estate is not what it appears.
The 1982 settlement—the official termination of Helen’s trust—becomes the dramatic climax of the first act. On paper, the daughters receive the cottage, the Plymouth Road home, and the $50,000 note. In reality, under Leo’s continued pressure, they turn these assets right back over to him. Hoffius later calls this out: the daughters did not have independent counsel, did not fully understand the consequences, and acted largely because they trusted their father’s promises. The settlement becomes the moment the daughters surrender the very protections Helen intended for them.
Years pass. The daughters wait for Leo to “make it right.” Instead, in 1993, Leo signs a new will and trust structure that effectively sidelines Helen’s line of inheritance. The daughters—who had already given up their trust assets—are now left exposed, realizing too late that their loyalty was taken advantage of.
In 1995, after Leo’s death, the truth hits like a blow. Mark steps forward to probate the will, but the daughters finally see in writing what Leo never intended to repair. Hoffius’s letters to Diana read like an autopsy of the entire inheritance drama. He lays out the history piece by piece: the pressure Leo exerted, the 1977 stipulation where the daughters professed confidence in him, the 1982 transfers that stripped them of their mother’s estate, and the unresolved mystery—what did Leo do with the assets once he regained them?
Hoffius’s tone grows sharper: if the daughters returned property because Leo insisted he needed it for the business, believing he would repay them with fairness, then they have a legitimate claim. Perhaps undue influence. Perhaps an enforceable promise. Perhaps a debt the estate still owes.
And now the second act begins. Probate filings show a family divided: Helen’s five daughters on one side, Nancy and her three children on the other. Old loyalties and old fears collide with the cold reality of legal paperwork. A guardian ad litem is appointed for Brenda, adding yet another vulnerable piece to the puzzle. Every notice, every hearing date, becomes a countdown to whether the daughters will finally stand up for what was promised—or whether Leo’s pressure, even after his death, will define the final outcome.
This is no ordinary estate case. It is a decades-long drama of a father’s power, a mother’s erased intentions, daughters caught between duty and self-protection, and the long shadow of a promise broken.
