The estate attorney asked me whether my father had ever told me who was supposed to receive the house. I said yes, twice, and both times he’d told me it would stay in the family. The attorney asked whether my stepmother had shown me the will, and I said she hadn’t. He went quiet and asked me to send him the note she’d left on the door. After reading it, he told me not to collect anything yet, because changing the locks and removing property before the estate was settled could become very important.
The next morning he obtained a copy of the will from the county records. My father’s house wasn’t left to my stepmother. It was left to me and my sister, with my stepmother given the right to live there for the rest of her life. The attorney then discovered that she had already signed a contract with the moving company and told them the house belonged to her. Worse, my father’s desk had been removed because she’d instructed them to clear the room before an appraiser arrived. We went to the house that afternoon, and the attorney demanded that everything removed be returned.
My stepmother finally admitted she’d never actually read the will and had assumed my father would leave everything to her. She said she changed the locks because she was afraid we’d take things before she could protect herself. I told her nobody had planned to take anything, but she had already treated us like thieves before the funeral flowers had even been cleared away. The moving company returned my father’s desk, his papers, and every box they’d taken. The locks were changed back, and the attorney arranged a formal inventory of the entire house. My father had spent his last months making sure his family would have a place to stand, and two days after he died, someone tried to decide who was allowed through the door.
