The saga continues. This is a long entry, with more papers to read, but should be the last with so much reading to do! As my readers are few (but comments so helpful and insightful!), I won't link the previous entries. Instead, I'll just go back and file the posts under the category, The Great Commotion, on the sidebar.
My next entry will explain what happened once the entire issue was in the attorneys' hands. After that, I want to write a little more about my family history, because readers have wondered what could drive a person to be so callous and entitled.
So, onward . . .
1. Mom and Dad created a revocable family trust in 2000 (they were both 76 years old at the time) and designated P. and I as equal beneficiaries of the estate. As P.'s children had both been born and were elementary school-aged at the time, I must presume that their inclusion, or not, in Mom and Dad's final wishes was discussed at the time. P.'s children were not named as beneficiaries.
2. After Dad died in January 2006, Mom and I went, maybe in February or March, to the trust attorney for her "free" consultation, promised after the death of one of the trust grantors. We reviewed Mom and Dad's assets, determined what things needed to be addressed in any way, updated forms and so forth.
Mom sat through the meeting in a kind of marginal, distant way. Most of the stuff, like what we needed to do to transfer Dad's IRA into Mom's name, for example, was complicated and over her head. Should it be "transferred" or "assumed?" And why? Stuff like that.
After Dad's death, neither Mom nor P. had any role in wrapping up Dad's affairs. And there's a lot of that stuff. Contacting various government agencies and insurance companies. Filling out forms, providing death certificates. Making sure payments are made. And whatever else. While I had been working on my parents' tax returns for a few years, I wasn't familiar with insurance policies and such.
Mom wasn't able to help and P. didn't want to help.
(Well, I guess I should be fair here. P. did "help" after Dad died. Before I arrived at the nursing home in Olney, two hours away, after receiving a phone call letting me know Dad had died, P. had fixed the time and date of Dad's funeral! It was scheduled, five days hence, at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning--just at rush hour, the last day of January (it was a frigid day and raining sheets). No phone calls to a funeral home were made, though; no discussions as to the disposition of the body; no consultation about possible out-of-town guests; no planning about any kind of gathering; no help or assistance on how ANY of this would be achieved. I was furious. When I asked P. why he had scheduled the funeral so quickly, he said, "I need closure." After Paul left the nursing home that morning, Mom and I did not see him, again, until he arrived for Dad's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery five days later. The graveside service was to last just 30 minutes, because they are tightly-scheduled there at Arlington, for obvious reasons. We could not begin until P. arrived . . . 15 minutes late! Oh, yeah. He also picked up the cold cuts for the after-funeral gathering at Mom's. Everything else was left to Mom, me and Tony. Oh, and after the funeral, he had Mom write him a check for $600--for funeral clothes for him and his kids.)
With Dad gone, Mom was in complete charge as the surviving grantor and trustee!
At the appointment with the attorney, we had a discussion about the possibility of Mom needing a co-trustee, but we left the appointment without altering what was already in place.
Why? Because Mom was heated in her determination that both P. and I should serve as her co-trustees. I was wary and lukewarm, at best.
Why? Because my parents' had created their trust to allow a trustee to operate independently, without the consultation or approval of the other trustee. If there were more than two, a majority was required for any action taken. With P.'s ability to persuade Mom, this concerned me greatly. The prospect of P. having unfettered access to my parents' assets sent a chill up my spine. The HELOC against Mom's home was still in the future, but his refusal to repay previous loans, his disinterest in helping me and Mom with anything after Dad's death, and my knowledge of his overall character caused me to stop dead in my tracks.
May I just say that such an arrangement is NEVER a good idea. Better to have some checks and balances, somehow, somewhere. Did I mention that if P. and/or I could not serve as trustee for ANY reason, once Mom was determined incapable, that the trust attorney was designated to serve as sole trustee of my parents' trust! I smelled CONFLICT OF INTEREST. It did NOT serve this attorney to act in the best interest of family harmony.
I just couldn't sign on to this.
3. During the summer of 2006, Mom took that trip to the bank (mentioned in an earlier post), at the bank's behest, and purchased municipal bond investments, while believing she was purchasing savings bonds for her grandchildren. Remember?
4. Mom and I, again, arranged to meet with the trust lawyer, in August, because of my concern that Mom had demonstrated a need for protection from herself. Again, Mom insisted that she wanted both P. and me to be "put on the will," as she would often say. I VERY reluctantly agreed, and P. was notified of the time, date and location of the appointment.
He did not show up. I was relieved. I was able to get Mom to agree to appoint me as her co-trustee, with P. serving if I was unable.
At that meeting, the attorney and I discussed Mom's municipal bonds transaction, the fact that she didn't understand what she was doing, and what we could do about it. He offered to write a letter on Mom's behalf to the bank, but I declined and said we would try to handle it ourselves. BIG mistake, on my part.
If I had accepted the attorney's offer, I would have had written proof, sort of, of my concern about Mom's cognitive abilities.
In the end, it played out that this attorney proved to be a real "roadblock" in my attempts to protect Mom's assets, once P. became involved and it was clear that there was a lot of disharmony and mistrust.
From August 2006 until September 2007, I served as Mom's co-trustee. While we included my name on her checking account and safe deposit box (which contained no valuables, only business and personal papers), none of her investments nor the deed to her home were altered to show any changes. They all still reflected the owners to be either Mom alone, or the family trust, with Mom and Dad as trustees. It was all pretty complicated, and I had enough on my plate with a full-time job and seeing to Mom's needs.
But, being able to sign checks was important, because Mom was having quite a bit of trouble with staying current on her bills. She didn't like me to actually sign the checks, but we reached a happy in-between-place where I would write the checks, file the paperwork, etc., and she would sign them. It worked pretty well.
Still, I DID have the appointment-of-co-trustee document, in case I ever needed it. (I never did.)
Throughout this year, P. was barely a presence in my or Mom's life. He rarely visited or called, and showed absolutely no interest in Mom's affairs . . . or health issues.
Until the Great Commotion of 2007-2008.
After learning about the HELOC plans, I was informed by Mom that she and P. had made a trip to the trust attorney on September 27, 2007, to have a new document created, assigning P. and me, along with Mom, as co-trustees.
It was sent to Mom's house and presented to me for signature.
I didn't sign it, but took it home with me.
After considering the situation, I faxed this letter below to the trust attorney. (I'll just post the first page; Page 2 was full of references to the trust language regarding incapacity and me instructing the attorney NOT to make any alterations, etc. It was terse and forceful, and I'm sure it rubbed him completely the wrong way.)
The attorney never bothered to call me back, though I had spoken with him earlier about my concerns. This letter was sort of a follow-up to that phone conversation.
Over the next few days, I fretted and fretted about the whole matter. My mother was terribly upset, but not really understanding what my concerns were or the possible ramifications of her desire to appoint P. as a trustee. She insisted that she wanted P. "on the will." I felt I had quite a clear vision of the situation.
But I was worn out. Oh, so worn out. I was ready to cave. And I did.
On October 15, 2007, I faxed the following letter to the trust attorney's office.
I believe I mentioned in another entry that I was scheduled to visit Mom on the weekend of October 13-14, 2007, but when I called, Mom told me not to come up. When I called, again, on the 15th (Monday), I told her I was coming to check on her out of concern.
It was on this day, the same day I sent this letter to the attorney, that I learned of P.'s plan to take Mom to the attorney to have her sign documents altering my parents' will for the benefit of himself and his family.
Needless to say, my resignation did not happen once I learned about that plan. It was the final straw for me.
It was a good thing I insisted on seeing Mom on that Monday, I'm thinking. And it was sheer happenstance, because no one had uttered a peep to me about the intended meeting, or the plans to change my parents' will, until P., on the spot, was forced to come clean with me on the phone. Not Mom, not P., and certainly not the trust attorney.
A few days later, after coming back to Olney from my place (where I had taken Mom after learning of P.'s plans), we visited her family doctor who, then, called the trust attorney and recommended that Mom not sign anything further until she had a neuropsychiatric assessment.
So . . .
I scheduled an appointment for Mom, and she was seen by a clinical practitioner in November, 2007. I didn't realize that she had to be seen by neuropsychiatrist in order to get a formal statement about Mom's abilities. So, I had to take her back the next month, in December, to be evaluated by the doctor.
Mom was assessed and diagnosed as suffering from probable mild-moderate Alzheimer's Disease. She scored 17/30 on the Mini Mental Status Exam. She had poor results on the other tests, as well.
I requested and received a letter to that effect, which was sent to the trust attorney. A care plan for Mom was also formulated, addressing medications, living arrangements, home help, etc.
The second letter required by the trust documents was provided by Mom's family physician in January, 2008. I kept the letter to take with me to a meeting I had scheduled with the trust attorney in February.
Meanwhile, Mom moved to Antique Village in mid-January, 2008.
By mid-February, it became necessary for me to send the following letter to P.
I bet you can tell how angry I was by the terse tone. Adult Protective Services was contacted by Antique Village, and Mom, P. and I were all interviewed. P. believes that I contacted APS. I know, because I found notes in Mom's room about it.
On the same day, I faxed this next letter to the trust attorney.

And here is the attorney's reply. You'll want to read that last sentence of the first paragraph carefully!
!!!!!
All the while, since the previous October, I had been in contact with an attorney of my own. I was petitioning the court for a guardianship for my mother. This last email from my mother's trust attorney effectively ended my communication with him.
After Mom moved to Antique Village, it was our intention to do a little more work on her home (we had undertaken an earlier rennovation project in the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007), with the intention of selling the house if Mom felt that she wanted to remain at Antique Village (which she did!).
Tony and I both put in weeks and months of work at Mom's house during both projects. Tony oversaw the rennovations of 2006-07, helped Mom move to Antique Village (we asked for P.'s help, but he didn't show up), and changed the locks on Mom's house when she moved. Mom had lived in her home for 25 years, given out numerous keys over the years and, now, her house would be vacant. I kept the new keys to myself, for the time being. You see, back in November, 2007, P. had entered Mom's house, while we were both there, and become so irate, yelling at me and slamming doors, that we both became very upset. It was frightening.
Regarding all these events, below is a set of emails between me and P. Read the original message at the bottom first, then P.'s response to me.

A few minutes later, I received this next email from P. You've already read the bottom part--the trust attorney's email, informing me that P. was now the sole trustee of Mom's assets. It's the brief note on top that you haven't seen, yet.
I haven't communicated with P., nor seen him, outside of a courtroom or other court-ordered surroundings, since I received this last email.
I learned that the American Bar Association has published guidelines on how to proceed when there is a case of possible dementia. Mom's trust attorney disregarded these guidelines, even after I provided documents supporting my concern.
Because my mother signed a document in the trust attorney's office on September 27, 2007, and did not receive her mental fitness evaluation, and the subsequent letters from the doctors, until the following December-January--roughly 90 days later--it was the attorney's apparent opinion that Mom was of sound mind to sign the appointment of P. as co-trustee in September.
I found it all very questionable, at best; I lean toward unethical, though.
My petition to secure a guardianship for my mother was filed March 13, 2008.
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