The attorney asked me whether my daughter had been given permission to inventory the jewelry. I said no, and he became very quiet. Then he asked whether she had photographed everything before anyone else had seen the will. I told him she had, and he said, “Then don’t let her delete those photographs.” He explained that my mother had left specific pieces to specific people, including one necklace that my daughter had already told her husband she was keeping. The attorney asked me to bring every photograph my daughter had taken to the estate meeting.
When we met, the attorney opened the will and read the jewelry section aloud. My daughter went completely silent. My mother had left the necklace to my sister, the diamond earrings to a granddaughter who lived across the country, and several other pieces to charity. My daughter wasn’t named for a single item. Then the attorney showed us an inventory my daughter had apparently started on her phone and compared it with the will. She had photographed twenty-three pieces and marked eleven of them as “hers” before the family had even seen the estate documents. The attorney told her that if she removed anything, it could become a much more serious matter.
My daughter cried and said she thought she was protecting the family from an argument. I told her protecting the family would have meant waiting for the will instead of deciding who deserved what. She deleted the list she’d made for herself, but the original photographs remained because she’d automatically backed them up. My sister received the necklace my mother had promised her years earlier, and the rest of the jewelry was distributed exactly as my mother requested. My daughter thought she was making a record of what she would inherit, but the photographs became a record of what she had already decided to take.
