…ended up being declared mentally incompetent by a judge. That was me.”
Her name was Joanne. She agreed to meet me at a coffee shop near my office the next day, and she brought a thick envelope.
Inside was a court order from 1998. Joanne, then thirty-four, had been placed under a temporary conservatorship after her husband — my husband — told a judge she was paranoid and delusional. There were letters from a psychiatrist he had found, describing her “irrational fears about money.”
“I had refused to put my inheritance into the joint account,” Joanne said. “So he made it look like I couldn’t manage it. Once the court gave him control, he moved everything out and disappeared. It took me three years to get my rights back. The money was gone.”
She told me he had used a different last name back then, his mother’s maiden name. That was why I had never found any record of her.
I went home and acted normal. That night, my husband brought up the investment account again. Then he said something I would never have noticed before Joanne.
“You’ve been so stressed lately, honey. You keep forgetting things. Maybe we should talk to someone. I found a doctor who’s very good.”
I hadn’t forgotten anything.
The next morning I went to my attorney with Joanne’s envelope. She checked the court records while I waited. The psychiatrist from 1998 had lost his license in 2006 for writing false evaluations. My husband had just made an appointment for me with a “very good doctor” who shared an office address with the same man.
My attorney told me to do three things. Get my own independent medical and cognitive evaluation, immediately. Move my inheritance into a trust controlled by a professional trustee. And say nothing.
I did all three. The evaluation said what I already knew: I was sharp, healthy and fully competent.
Two weeks later, my husband filed a petition asking the court to appoint him as my temporary conservator. He described me as confused, forgetful and “vulnerable to financial exploitation.”
At the hearing, my attorney handed the judge my evaluation, the 1998 conservatorship order and the license revocation of the doctor behind it. Then Joanne took the stand.
The judge dismissed the petition in under an hour and referred the matter to the district attorney.
He was charged with attempted financial elder abuse and filing a false petition. In the investigation, police found a third woman — a widow in Arizona he had married between Joanne and me. Her money had disappeared the same way.
I divorced him. My father’s money stays in the trust, exactly where he would have wanted it.
Joanne and I still meet for coffee every month. She says she spent twenty-five years wondering if anyone would ever believe her. I tell her it only took one person to pick up the phone.
