A sheriff’s deputy served me at my daughter’s graduation. My sister is suing for the house. Her claim is that our mother promised it to her verbally in 2016 and I “manipulated the deed” in 2019. The deed was recorded on April 3rd, 2019. Our mother had a stroke on April 11th. My sister’s own petition says Mom lacked capacity “from early 2019 onward”—and then attaches a hospital record that dates the event to the 11th, eight days after the recording. Her lawyer attached that record himself as Exhibit C.
I circled the two dates on a printout and mailed it to my sister with nothing else in the envelope. Four days later my phone rang at six in the morning and it was her attorney. He didn’t ask about the deed. He asked whether I had the original appointment records from the attorney’s office. I told him I did. There was a signed statement from Mom dated March 28th saying exactly what she wanted done with the house, and there were two witnesses who had been there when she signed it.
Then the attorney who prepared the deed came forward. He had kept his complete file for the required period, including the identification records, the signed instructions, and his notes from the meeting. Mom had come into his office alone on March 28th and told him she wanted the house transferred to me because I was the one who had been paying the mortgage and maintaining it. My sister hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in the file. The attorney also had a receipt showing Mom had paid his fee herself by check three days before the deed was signed.
At the hearing, my sister’s lawyer tried to argue that Mom’s later stroke proved she had been declining before the deed. The judge stopped him and asked what evidence he had that she lacked capacity on March 28th. He had none. Then the attorney who prepared the deed testified under oath that Mom understood exactly what she was signing and had explained her reasons without hesitation. The judge dismissed my sister’s emergency request. But before we left, the judge looked at my sister and said something I’ll never forget: “You cannot use a medical event that happened eight days later to rewrite what happened eight days earlier.”
