The line in the chart note said: “Patient understands that his daughter has not contacted him in four years and has decided to leave her no further property.” His doctor had written it after a routine appointment during the week the will was signed. She explained that he had brought up the subject himself, without anyone asking him about his estate. He knew exactly what he owned, who had received what, and why he had decided to change his will. The doctor also wrote that he was frustrated that his daughter had not spoken to him since 2017.
My half-sister’s attorney tried to argue that the note only reflected my father’s version of events. The judge asked whether her client disputed that she had received the house in 2009, the car in 2014, and the loan payment in 2018. Her attorney said those facts weren’t being disputed. Then the judge asked why the same daughter who claimed he couldn’t understand his finances in 2021 had accepted three major financial gifts from him without questioning his capacity. Nobody answered.
His doctor had one more thing to say. She attached a second note from the same week describing him doing the crossword, discussing his medications, and correcting an error in his appointment summary. She wrote that he was fully oriented and capable of making his own medical decisions. Then she added that she had never been contacted by my half-sister before the lawsuit. “Had I been asked,” she wrote, “I would have explained that I had no clinical concern about his cognition at that time.”
The judge dismissed the portion of the challenge based on lack of capacity and ordered the remaining claims to be reviewed separately. My half-sister sat completely still while her attorney explained what it meant. Outside the courtroom she finally approached me and said she’d believed Dad had been manipulated into changing the will because she couldn’t accept that he’d made the decision while thinking clearly. I told her the truth was harder than that: he had been thinking clearly, and he had remembered everything. She looked at me for a long time and said, “I think that’s what I’ve been fighting this whole time.”
