Instant ruin: a lifetime of work down the drain due to 1 bad decision

[William]

A friend of mine was the son of a "notarius publicum" in France. This is like a lawyer office and all legal transactions have to go thru one of these offices in France. There are only a small amount of them, an amount that the gvt. decides and whoever owns one of them is assured to be very wealthy. These offices can be inherited by the owner's children if they have completed at least second year at law school.

My friend was on his second year of college and had 3 months left of that year when his father dies and he can't inherit the family bussiness. The office went back to the gvt and was auctioned to a new owner.
That really sucked.