Dividing the Estate

Dividing the Estate is the story of the Gordon clan, a Texas family who has been hard hit by the precipitous drop in oil prices in 1987. Family matriarch Stella rules over the family, but she is 85 years old, and her family smells their inheritance coming. Her younger daughter, Mary Jo, comes to visit for the day along with her husband, and their two daughters, prompting a family get-together. Mary Jo is deeply in debt and wants to divide the estate before her mother dies. Various members of the family, including the servants, take sides in the debate, and wonder how much, if anything, there actually is to inherit. The family bickers as only a Southern family can, mentioning every slight and insult that has occurred over the past 80 years. Light comedy turns dark in Act Two, when two deaths occur.