Jordan had stamped the quitclaim deed anyway.
At 8:30 the next morning, I appeared at the emergency guardianship hearing by video from Lena’s office.
Thomas sat in the courtroom beside his attorney.
Mrs.
Higgins was behind him, dressed in black and holding a folded handkerchief as though she were attending a funeral.
Their petition described me as unreachable, irrational, financially reckless, and unable to care for myself.
It claimed Thomas had received alarming reports from medical professionals.
The judge asked Thomas when he had last spoken to me.
“Several weeks ago,” he answered.
Lena displayed our phone records.
Thomas and I had spoken almost every evening while I was in Pine Valley.
Some calls lasted more than forty minutes.
The judge asked whether I had sounded confused.
Thomas hesitated.
“Sometimes.”
Lena played a voicemail Thomas had left me six days earlier.
In it, he asked me to approve a kitchen renovation and complained that I had not transferred enough money into our shared grocery account.
He had treated me as competent when he wanted money and incompetent when he wanted control.
Lena then submitted a sworn statement from my father’s actual surgeon.
It confirmed that I had been present as my father’s caregiver, that I displayed no signs of impairment, and that Dr.
Ortega could not have written the letter because he had died months before my father’s surgery.
The judge examined the supposed medical letter.
“Mr.
Higgins,” she said, “did you verify any of this information before submitting it to the court?”
Thomas looked toward his attorney.
His attorney moved several inches away from him.
“I trusted my mother’s cousin,” Thomas said.
Mrs.
Higgins rose from her seat.
“That is not what happened.”
The judge ordered her to sit down.
Instead, she pointed at Thomas.
“He said we only needed the temporary order for one day.
Just until the loan cleared.”
Even through the video screen, I saw Thomas’s face lose color.
His attorney closed his eyes.
The judge denied the guardianship petition, struck the proposed order, and referred the filings to the district attorney’s fraud unit.
She also issued a temporary order prohibiting Thomas from selling, borrowing against, transferring, or entering my apartment without my written consent while the ownership dispute was reviewed.
There was no genuine ownership dispute.
The original deed showed that I had purchased the apartment before the marriage with my own funds.
The transfer document was fraudulent, the notarization was invalid, and the county recorder had never accepted it because Lena had enrolled the property in an automated fraud-alert program after a client of hers suffered title theft.
That alert had quietly stopped the scheme before I even opened the drawer.
Thomas and Mrs.
Higgins had believed they were hours away from receiving the money.
In reality, the title company had been waiting for additional identity verification from me.
By noon, building security escorted Mrs.
Higgins out while I watched from the lobby.
She had packed my robe into one of her suitcases.
I removed it and placed it on the front desk.
“You can keep it,” she said bitterly.
“It looks better on me anyway.”
I did not answer.
She wanted one final argument so she could leave feeling powerful.
I gave her silence instead.
Thomas was required to retrieve his belongings later under supervision.
