…and on the tab, under his name, someone had written in pencil: “Re: letter of capacity?”
I knew that word. My grandmother had passed away in January and left me her house. My husband had been asking me, over and over, to sign a paper giving him power of attorney “just for the paperwork.” I kept putting it off.
“He’s asked whether it would be appropriate for you to have someone manage your affairs,” Dr. Lane said finally. “I told him no. Twice.”
Then she did something I didn’t expect. She closed the folder, put both hands flat on her desk, and said, “I made a mistake. I should never have agreed to see your husband without speaking to you first. I’m ending my sessions with him today, and I’m going to document exactly why.”
She told me to talk to a lawyer before I signed anything, and before I said a word at home.
I found one that afternoon, a woman named Priya who works in estate law. She pulled the county records while I sat across from her. Three weeks earlier, my husband had already called a realtor about my grandmother’s house. He’d told them his wife “wasn’t well” and that he would be handling the sale.
I went home and found the power of attorney form in his desk drawer, already filled out. There was a sticky note on it in his handwriting: “Get Lane’s letter first.”
The night in March, the one he’d been telling my therapist about, was the night I found a second phone in his gym bag. I’d cried, I’d yelled, and he’d told me I was imagining things. I believed him, because he made it sound so reasonable. In his version, I was the one who fell apart.
I didn’t yell this time. I put the form, the sticky note, and Priya’s card on the kitchen table and waited for him to come home. He read the note and went very pale. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he said. I said, “It looks like you tried to get my own therapist to tell a judge I can’t take care of myself.”
He moved out that weekend. The house is still in my name, and Priya made sure it will stay that way.
Dr. Lane referred me to a colleague, so I could start over with someone he’s never met. In my first session, my new therapist asked what brought me in. I said, “I want to tell my own story for once.” And I did.
