Peter Woroncow spends most of his days on a couch, watching game shows. His hands are where his elbows should be, and his stubby legs don't reach the edge of the cushions - but he has a remarkable gift.

        His mother, Helen, asked me to tell him my birthday.

        Then she asked him, “Now tell Mr. Bronson what day that was this year.”

        “I guess Wednesday,” Peter replied, too quickly for a guess. He was right.

        Peter has achondroplasia, commonly known as dwarfism. His head seems too large, and his arms and legs are several sizes too small. But he has a charming smile - as if he knows secrets the rest of us don't understand.

        Here's one I'd like to understand: How can tax collectors and lawyers eat up his inheritance like termites in the attic?

        Peter's father died of a heart attack while mowing his back yard, leaving Peter about $500,000. Two years later, Mrs. Woroncow says, less than $300,000 is left - and the lawyer fees and tax bills are still piling up.

        Mr. Woroncow died without a will. His estate of more than $1 million has been tangled in litigation by a flock of lawyers representing Peter, his mother and two sisters.

Too many lawyers

        Lawyer Jim Coogan has been handling probate cases for more than 40 years. He's trying to sort out the estate so that Peter, 27, can be taken care of by his mother. “Litigation comes mainly from relatives who cannot get along,” he said.

        That's part of the problem. But so is the way the estate has been handled. Mr. Coogan filed a court memo saying the court-appointed administrator “breached his duties by needlessly incurring expense and delay.”

        Mr. Coogan says Batavia lawyer John Woliver filed incorrect tax returns, doubled the attorney costs to the estate by hiring another lawyer, failed to dispose of property and improperly put Mrs. Woroncow's modest Anderson Township home in the estate, adding $54,000 in estate taxes: 40 percent federal, 7 percent for Ohio.

        Mr. Woliver says the memo is false: “The notion that I am just sitting on this doesn't reflect the facts.” He says the estate is complicated by a 1977 divorce that the Woroncows ignored. He insists the estate could have been settled long ago at far less cost if Mrs. Woroncow had not switched lawyers and changed her mind repeatedly.

        I don't know who's right. But that's what you get from guys who are paid about $200 an hour to talk while Peter's money evaporates.

        “There's not going to be a penny left when the lawyers are done,” Mrs. Woroncow said, surrounded by legal papers and bills on her kitchen table. She says the lawyers ran up fees that will be twice as much as the home is worth.

        And then there's the blood-sucking taxman.

        “The taxes are not of our making,” said Mr. Coogan. “The law doesn't take into account their situation.”

A killer tax

        Helen and Peter are just numbers on IRS charts. The taxes take 47 percent of money that was already taxed as income - whether the survivors can afford it or not. Estate administrators' fees are based on the size of the estate, creating a possible conflict of interest: The more they drag into the estate, the more they make - and the more the heirs can lose to taxes.

        The lesson: Make a will. Don't invite lawyers into family business. Tell Congress to kill the death tax that gouges grieving survivors.

        Peter functions at the age of 5, but he understands one thing: “I don't want to go to a group home,” he said.

        He can count. But to the death-tax vultures, he doesn't count at all.

        E-mail: pbronson@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/bronson

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