Thomas Pritchett

*"I didn't leave you! I was running from myself!" - Thomas Pritchett*

**Thomas Pritchett** is a prominient judge and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, who was once married to socialite Elizabeth Woods of Ashford Falls, New York.

Born in Boston, Masaachusetts in 1939, Thomas is a member of the wealthy Pritchett Family of Berkshire County, Massachusetts. A family filled with doctors, lawyers and politicians, the family was well acquainted with many of the top families of New England, such as the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Collins of Collinsport and the Woods Family of Ashford Falls. He was good friends with Robert Woods, who was five years younger than him. Although he thought of Robert as a younger brother, they drifted apart when Thomas started attending Harvard Law School, althought they often saw each other again during summers at the Farhampton Inn on Long Island.

Over the years, Thomas's parents and Robert's parents began guiding him into a relationship with Robert's older sister, Elizabeth. Closer in age, Robert and Elizabeth had dated only a few months when just as he was about to set up his practice, Elizabeth and Thomas were encouraged to marry, but he was unaware the marriage was being set up to force Elizabeth to stay at home and take care of her baby girl, Monica Woods. He was definitely attracted to Elizabeth and wanted to marry her, but he had reservations against raising someone else's daughter, a figure Elizabeth couldn't recall. After they married, they had their own child together, Carolyn Woods.

During the marriage, Paul started his law practice in Ashford Falls and was hired by Monica Hedison to handle her potential divorce from Carter Hedison, but they had a seeming reconciliation afterward. He also handled the estate of Fletcher DuBois and defended Russell Coleman on charges of public mischief among other cases. During this time, his brother, Christopher Pritchett, was killed during a skiing vacation in Colorado, and his son Watson Pritchett, went to live with his sister, Nancy Pritchett, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Uninterested in living with his aunt, eight-year-old Watson ended up bluffing a bus driver to get him to Ashford Falls and getting a lift to Thornewood Hall to live with his uncle and aunt. Raised like a brother alongside Victoria and Carolyn, the youth quickly assimilated into the family's lifestyle much to Elizabeth's consternation.

However, a short time after his arrival, Thomas and Elizabeth's forced marriage started coming apart. As a lawyer, he felt pressed into the role of a small town public defender, a role he felt beneath his anilities. Along side the job, Elizabeth's father, William Woods was grooming him to take his role in the Woodlands Corporation, the family business. In addition to the stress of three kids and the exceeding remoteness of the estate from town, the circumstances started having a psychological toll on him. After Liz discovered him trying to charm Maggie Winters, the children's governess, she challenged him to walk out on her, a chance he immediately accepted. Surprised by him moving out, a spiteful Liz destroyed all images of him in the family history and had Carolyn's surname legally changed to "Woods" to erase all existence of him in the family records.

Promising to return for Watson when he got resettled, Thomas moved to Boston and took a room with Jason McConnell, an old classmate from Harvard. Having acted in high school, he dabbled in it once more as he sent his resume to the local law firms, evetually landing a position at the Morton and Hayes Law Firm. He met and dated Cassandra Beaumont, an actress, marrying her as soon as his divorce became final. In 1996, he started the law firm of McCoy, Woods and Mason.

Shortly after building his law firm, he returned to Ashford Falls to visit Carolyn and keep his promise to Watson, but after twelve years of Liz's deep resentment to him, neither of them wanted anything to do with him. He reached out to Liz's cousin, Barclay Woods, who had since arrived at the estate, to help him, but Barclay didn't want to takes sides in the dispute. Thomas also turned up at nearby Elk Brook Lodge in Wyckoff, where he re-connected with Liz's other former husband, Sam Lockbridge, a local artist, he had befriended during their terse marriage. While engaging in nostalgia with Sam, he encountered Nicholas Luckweather, Barclay's former brother-in-law, who approached Thomas with a scheme to help him seize the Woods Family fortune. The two of them formulated a plan to legally seize half of the Woodlands Corporation as over-looked spoils of the marriage, a plot that Luckweather used to try and get Liz's daughter, Monica Woods, into marriage. Nicholas's sister, Victoria Luckweather, however, sided with her husband in the dispute with the Woods Family. To ruin the family's standing, Nicholas publically suggested that Liz's relationship with Thomas had been abusive, even going as far as exposing Maggie Winters had being an unfit guardian for Monica and Carolyn. Barclay even attacked Nicholas and then Thomas to defend Elizabeth, but Carolyn rushed to her father's defense. Seeing the turmoil resulting in the family, Thomas pulled away from the lawsuit, which without him, soon fell apart. He and Carolyn made their peace with each other afterward, asking her to come visit him in Boston from time to time.

Feeling unwelcome in town due to Nicholas's treachery, Thomas returned to Boston. He eventually reached the judicial court system with Carolyn and Victoria visiting him from time to time.