55 East 10th St. 
	14 November 1940
Dear Professor Einstein,
Unfortunately, I am only now getting around to reporting to you on the discussion with the lawyers. The outcome was as follows:
(1)	A bankruptcy declaration would technically indeed be possible (despite the annual profits) but is not recommended for legal reasons & because of intervening complications. 
 (2)	The reason to get rid of the building is two-fold: (a) high management costs; (b) pot[ential] continued payments on the mortgages. To these the following suggestions: per (a), relieving Guggenh. entirely of the management is not expedient, in the lawyers’ opinion; that they, the lawyers, definitely need a legal advisor in Switzerland for the tax declarations, etc. However, 
 [ALS]


the lawyer’s work should be restricted to a minimum & most of it transferred back to Mrs. M. The lawyers propose that I write a private letter to Guggenheim & suggest to him a limitation to the absolute minimum, in order to save on expenses. (b) If further repayment on the mortgages should be required, then we would not pay & risk an auction, etc.
 (3)	Giving Gugg. the instruction to pay all the surplus to Mrs. M. (or even to your son) is not recommended for Americ. legal reasons. If Switzerland should be occupied or if for other reasons remittances of money from here are no longer possible, one could then instruct Gugg. to make the payments to Mrs. M.— 
 (4)	Enclosed I send back to you the letter received from Gugg.
[Verso of p. 1. Note in margin at left of first paragraph: “Should this happen?”]


		(2)
From the carbon copies I ascertained for myself that the lawyers have responded, by air-mail letter of Oct. 21st, to all the questions posed by Gugg. & remitted his fees by cable to him on that day. There only remains for you to send Gugg. receipts for 800.– fr. & 375.– fr., which he has requested in his letter, & to which there are no objections. It is safe to assume that Gugg. will soon transfer the remainder of the account to you.  
____________
I probably told you that one of the lawyers, Mr. Levy, with whom we did the will, phoned to ask me to come and see him as he has something


to say to me.—It did not concern the will, but the fact that Mr. Maass had pointed out to him that for years now the office has been performing work—the wills and Hutten Street—but has never been compensated, not even for cash expenses. Whether there were any objections to a billing? I replied that I did not know whether there were any sort of arrangements between you & Mr. M. but that I was sure that you even wished to be billed, provided ‹Mr. M.› no conflicting arrangements existed. Mr. Levy said repeatedly, that Mr. M. had repeatedly asked him to talk to me about this. I told him that I would relay the content of this conversation to you. Would you like me to give any answer? Would you like to give one yourself? Or shall we simply let the matter be?—Then the firm will probably send a bill sometime.—I was very offended by this.—
Kind regards, 
Yours,
	O. N. 
[Verso of p. 2.]