The Legal Shenanigans: Story Part 2

Apparently, Eva the lawyer was not able to handle the case by herself, so Eva the adopted daughter hired a more expensive attorney named Mary.

We were allowed to go into the house for 3 hours and take family heirlooms and belongings. Only one person was allowed in (Nancy) and the visit was supervised by a neutral 3rd party. This just seemed to be such a low-handed “agreement”. We even had the court approved Power of Special Administrator but were not allowed to go into the home because we were blocked by the house-sitter who was paid by Eva, who literally had no legal authority at the time.

Mary and her firm created an agreement which gave us Dad’s RV and a Ford Escape. In exchange no parties may sue each other. Specifically we are not allowed to sue Eva for Elder Abuse. This really seems like a “tell” to me. She clearly had influence over him, and was controlling him by manipulating his emotions. She did this all from her home in Massachusetts.

An estate sale was held and Nancy went there to try to get some of our other belongings (such as things we made when we were children) that we were not able to get in the 3 hour time window. We also got his computer. As a result we can see emails which reveal the whole sordid dialog between Eva and Frank. Interestingly, there were almost two years of emails that were deliberately deleted. The period of time from January 2015 to the week he went into the hospital (November 22) were deleted. Using the power of deduction, one can deduce that someone in his house with access to his computer and his email account specifically went in and deleted the emails (his password could have been posted on the computer with a sticky note). It seems that there is something very bad for Eva’s case in his emails.

We took the computer to a computer forensics team. They revealed that Eva met Frank on Match.com. I know that Frank was not looking to hook up with people in Massachusetts, so it appears that Eva was the person initiating a “relationship”. We can only speculate what drew a 50 ish woman who lives in MA to a surly old man who’s byline was “Wealthy, lonely old man seeks companionship”.

The forensics team also uncovered an email from Frank to our family friend Gwen in August 2016. In it he says:

“I’m sure you know I have no children or heirs other than my dogs. I’d like you to consider being the custodians of my estate. It’s not much, but I would like it to be handled by someone I know rather than a court appointed custodian”.

Isn’t that curious? He did not think of Eva as his daughter nor heir. He didn’t include us either, which is hurtful, but then again our whole relationship seemed to have been cancelled in his mind when he divorced our mother. We didn’t know this, however. My sisters and I treated him as our father until his death, and he always signed emails and cards with “Love Dad”, so we never knew that we were equivalent to “somebody that I used to know”.

In the emails, the forensics team did determine that Frank and Marion broke up in February 2016, and immediately after, Frank suggested Eva  take a vacation with him (reading between the lines). This was also just a couple of months after Eva and her daughters had taken a cruise with Frank (Marion apparently didn’t go)

Story continues in Part 3: The Settlement