Elizabeth Bohlinger's will

Elizabeth Bohlinger's will is not simply a distribution of property: it redirects control of Bohlinger Cosmetics to Catherine Humphries-Bohlinger while making Brett Bohlinger earn a separate inheritance by completing a ten-goal life list. Its provisions regulate who may use the Astor Street house, who receives the company, and when Brett can claim what is held for her. The result is an inheritance structured as a sequence of restrictions, revelations, and required actions.

Property and the Astor Street house

One provision requires Elizabeth's home at 113 North Astor Street and everything in it to remain intact for twelve months. Neither the house nor its contents may be sold or leased during that period. Her children may stay for no more than thirty consecutive days, though they may use household items for personal purposes. The distinctions are precise: the house is preserved, its contents remain in place, and family members receive limited permission to inhabit and use it.

The restriction immediately prompts Joad Bohlinger to question the need to keep a home his siblings already have elsewhere. Brett's reaction is more private. She looks down at her cuticles, stung by her brother's apparent assumption that she shares ownership of the loft where she lives with Andrew. She does not: although she has lived there for three years and invested more money in it than Andrew, the loft is legally his. The contrast makes the will's rules about residence and ownership newly personal. A home cannot be treated as Brett's merely because she lives in it, while her mother's house remains bound by explicit terms after Elizabeth's death.

The company goes to Catherine

When Brad Midar begins reading the provision for Bohlinger Cosmetics, Brett anticipates that she may inherit the company. The prospect already weighs on her: she thinks about the company's value, doubts her ability to lead it, and remembers the previous day's scene at her mother's funeral luncheon. Catherine sits ready to record every detail of the business arrangement, while Brett imagines a future in which Catherine will continue to monitor her at work.

The will then names Catherine, not Brett, as recipient of all Elizabeth's shares and the title of chief executive officer. The distinction between daughter and daughter-in-law lands as a sharp reversal: Brett hears that the position goes to her sister-in-law and recognizes that the anticipated transfer of power is not hers. Her anger is immediate. This clause does more than allocate the company; it separates family inheritance from corporate succession and prevents Brett's expectation from becoming fact. The available provisions identify Catherine as both shareholder and CEO, without establishing any further terms of her management.

The life list and the withheld inheritance

After the business provision, Brad Midar tells Brett that Elizabeth had something different in mind for her. He opens a second manila file and gives her a piece of yellowed notebook paper, its creases suggesting that it had once been crumpled into a tight ball. He identifies it as Brett's life list. The shift from formal business documents to worn personal paper changes the scale of the reading: Brett is no longer being told only what property she will receive, but what she must do before she can receive it.

The mechanism is concrete. Brad produces a stack of pink envelopes bound with a rubber band. Each time Brett completes a life goal, she must return to him to receive one. The final envelope, marked FULFILLMENT, contains her inheritance, and she can claim it only after completing all ten goals. The will therefore turns the list into a staged exchange: a completed goal earns an envelope, and the full set of goals unlocks the promised inheritance. One example Brett encounters is getting a dog, a goal she immediately resists because she says she has no time even for a fish. Her reluctance establishes that compliance cannot be assumed simply because the terms are written down.

Deadlines and narrative effect

The requirements also operate on a strict calendar. Brett must complete at least one goal by the end of the month; the entire list is due one year after the will reading, on September thirteenth of the following year. Brad's reminder that the clock is ticking makes the terms feel active rather than archival. The paper can be kept or refused, but its deadlines have already begun to define the time available to Brett.

The will's structure connects several different forms of control. The house clause preserves a physical place and limits its use; the company clause transfers authority to Catherine; the life-list arrangement makes Brett's inheritance contingent on a year of effort. These outcomes do not collapse into a single judgment about what Elizabeth valued, since the evidence reveals the terms but not a complete explanation of her motives. Dramatically, however, the effects are clear: Brett leaves the reading without the company she expected, carrying the list that makes her inheritance depend on goals she has not chosen to welcome. The will thus initiates her central challenge by turning a document about the dead into a timetable for the living.