The author's father close to the end of his life decided to financially deadlock the author. As a result the author got lost in a subsequent legal battle, which continues to this date. Here's how he did it:

Upon his father's death, the author discovered that his father left his property to the author and to his second wife (Mrs. M.) as follows:

1. Author and Mrs. M. get 50% of the inheritance each.
2. Deceased still owes Mrs. M. 60,000,000 drachmas, which are to be paid to Mrs. M. in full.

By law, parental debts are transferred to the offspring, and until such debts are cleared, nobody gets nothing. In other words, the author's father transferred his debt to the author. Upon seeing his father's will in 1986, the author became enraged and assumed that he could overthrow his father's will legally and achieve a better result than the one the will called for (which was an intentional deadlock), by hiring a lawyer with a 33% fee on a successful result. The legal battle with Mrs. M. that ensued became deadlocked for 23 years (1986 - 2009), until the author finally (after 23 years!) realized that the simplest solution was the complete resignation of his right to the 50% that his father left him.

The solution was to resign of the inherited 50% and use it to repay the debt. Once the author realized this, on the 23rd anniversary of his father's death, he proposed the above plan to Mrs. M. Mrs. M. agreed to this settlement, but the lawyers of both sides disagreed. Here are the mathematical details, using Maple:

> Debt:=60000000/340.75;#Drachmas->Euros
> Debt := 176082.1717
> interestRate:=4.75/100;
> CompoundedDebt:=period->Debt*(1+interestRate)^period;
> Property:=1500000;
> SellersRate:=Property*2/100;
> CommonBuildingExpensesAccrued:=15000;
> MrsMShare:=(Property-SellersRate-CommonBuildingExpensesAccrued)/2;
> AuthorShare:=MrsMShare;
> Leftover:=period->AuthorShare-CompoundedDebt(period);
> AuthorLawyerExpenses:=period->1/3*Leftover(period);
> AuthorLawyerExpenses(23);
71837.98899

> AuthorGets:=Leftover(23)-AuthorLawyerExpenses(23);
AuthorGets := 143675.9780

Follows a graph showing the net amount the author would have gotten from his father's inheritance, had he resigned sooner, as a function of the resignation period in years, with period=0 meaning immediate resignation (1986), and period=23 being now (June 15, 2009), assuming the value of his father's property remained constant throughout these 23 years (which is a fairly safe assumption, but not entirely correct).

> with(plots):
> p1:=plot(Leftover(period)-AuthorLawyerExpenses(period),period=0..23,color=green):
> p2:=plot(AuthorLawyerExpenses(period),period=0..23,color=red):
> p3:=plot([[23,0],[23,Leftover(23)-AuthorLawyerExpenses(23)]],color=black):
> display({p1,p2,p3});

Net amount of inheritance (green) and lawyer expenses (red), as a function of time (1986 - 2016), with the black line being now (15/6/2009).

Note how quickly the interest "eats up" the inheritance. After 30+1/2 years the inheritance will completely disappear, which is something to be expected anyway, since that was exactly what was intended by the author's father. The optimal solution, is of course p=0, because there are no lawyer expenses at p=0. Tremendous money has been lost:

> ErrorCost:=Leftover(0)-Leftover(23); #Euros
335903.8613

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