- A struggling lawyer and volunteer wrestling coach's chicanery comes back to haunt him when the teenage grandson of the client he has double-crossed comes into his life.
- Disheartened attorney Mike Flaherty (Giamatti), who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach, stumbles across a star athlete through some questionable business dealings while trying to support his family. Just as it looks like he will get a double payday, the boy's mother shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything.—Fox Searchlight Pictures
- New Providence, New Jersey lawyer Mike Flaherty, who has his own small firm, suffers from anxiety due to financial problems. Those problems stem from insufficient work for the firm, increasing overhead with the building in which he operates literally falling apart before his eyes, and increasing costs at home in taking care of his family. Being a lawyer, he refuses to supplement his income by doing work he thinks beneath him, although he does a side job with his law firm assistant and friend Stephen Vigman coaching the less than adept wrestling team at his alma mater, New Providence High School. He is shielding everyone around him from these financial problems, including that family consisting of his "bark worse than bite" wife Jackie, and their two preschool aged daughters, Abby and Stella, although his long time best friend, Terry Delfino, who is facing his own issues in hatred fixation of his ex-wife and her new partner living in "his" house, does find out Mike's problems out of circumstance. To solve his financial problems, Mike seizes upon a less than ethical opportunity concerning a court appointed client, Leo Poplar. Wealthy Leo is at the early stages of dementia, but would rather live "at home" as opposed to the probable court order to send him to a care facility. The whereabouts of Leo's only known family, his daughter Cindy, with who he has been estranged for twenty years, is unknown, she the only real candidate to act as Leo's guardian if he were to continue to live in his house. When he learns that Leo's guardianship includes a $1,500 per month stipend, Mike convinces the court to allow him to assume guardianship of Leo. Mike, in turn, places Leo in that care facility while he collects that $1,500 per month basically doing nothing on Leo's behalf, he telling those that ask only one half of the story, either that he is taking care of Leo, or that the court ordered Leo to move into the care facility. Complications ensue in the case when Leo's teenaged grandson, Kyle Timmons, who Leo didn't even know existed, unexpectedly lands on his doorstep wanting to live with him. Based on Leo's situation but knowing nothing about about Kyle beyond the guilt by association of what Leo had mentioned about deadbeat Cindy, Mike, with Jackie's reluctant approval, decides they have no other option but to take Kyle in until they locate Cindy to take him back. Although one issue that Mike learns about Kyle's past buoys that notion of keeping him around longer than anticipated, Mike knows Cindy's eventual arrival and what he eventually learns about her relationship with Kyle can only make what he's doing with Leo more tenuous.—Huggo
- Small-town New Providence, New Jersey attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) moonlights as a wrestling coach and struggles to keep his practice solvent, while shielding his wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), and their two young daughters, Abby and Stella, from the extent of the problem. When his court-appointed client Leo Poplar (Burt Young), who is suffering from early dementia, turns out to have no locatable relatives, Flaherty persuades a judge to appoint him as guardian, for which he will receive a stipend of $1500/month.
When Poplar's troubled teenage grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) shows up from Ohio looking to live with him, Mike and Jackie let him stay with them, as Mike has moved Leo to a senior care facility. Kyle tries to break into Leo's old house, and when Mike and Jackie question him about it, he reveals his troubled family life. His mom is in rehab, she lives with her boyfriend, and he doesn't want to go back. After Kyle sits in on wrestling practice, they discover that he is a talented wrestler, and enroll him at Mike's high school, where he can resume his education and wrestle on Mike's losing team, helping to make them viable contenders in their league.
This win-win setup is disrupted when Kyle's mother Cindy (Melanie Lynskey) shows up fresh out of rehab and attempts to gain custody of her father and her son, and with them her father's substantial estate. When Kyle learns that Mike had originally promised to keep Leo in his home but has instead moved him to a nursing home, the boy rejects Mike as a money-grubbing opportunist no better than his mother. Realizing the mistake of his earlier actions, and seeking instead to do what's best for both Leo and Kyle, Mike offers Cindy his monthly stipend in exchange for leaving her son and father in his care. He and Jackie take Kyle into their home permanently and return Leo to his, with Mike instead taking a bartending job to address his financial problems.
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