When she tried to tell me what she planned to do, I had stopped her and told her to speak with an independent attorney.
“I am not leaving this to her because she demanded it,” my grandmother said on the screen.
“I am leaving it to her because she never did.”
My mother made a sound under her breath.
The judge paused the recording.
“Is there a challenge to the authenticity of this video?”
Their attorney stood slowly.
“My clients believe the deceased may have been coached.”
“By whom?”
He looked at the estate attorney, then at me.
“We are still investigating.”
The judge’s expression cooled.
“You filed a petition accusing a specific person of undue influence.
Who do you allege coached the deceased in this recording?”
My father answered before his attorney could stop him.
“She did.
Somehow.
That’s what she does.
She twists things and then sits there acting calm.”
I kept my hands flat on the table.
The judge resumed the recording.
My grandmother described birthdays my parents had forgotten, family dinners where they praised my siblings and spoke over me, and the years in which they referred to my career as a phase because they did not know what it was.
She did not sound angry.
That made it worse.
She sounded certain.
“I watched them decide who she was without ever learning who she became,” she said.
“I will not let them make that decision for me too.”
The video ended.
For several seconds, no one moved.
My mother finally stood.
“She was old,” she said.
“She held grudges.
She exaggerated everything.”
Her attorney reached for her sleeve, but she pulled away.
“We were her children.
That money should have come to us.
We would have managed it properly.”
The judge looked at her.
“The petition states that your concern is your mother’s true intent and your daughter’s welfare.”
“It is.”
“Yet you have just described the estate as money that should have come to you.”
My mother opened her mouth, then closed it.
My father stood beside her.
“This is ridiculous,” he said.
“Our daughter kept her entire life secret and manipulated my mother into punishing us.
She has always needed attention.”
I opened the third folder.
Their attorney saw it and sat down heavily.
The folder contained communications my grandmother’s attorney had obtained during discovery.
Most were messages my parents had sent directly to my grandmother.
In one, my father demanded to know whether she had changed the beneficiary designations on her accounts.
In another, my mother warned that I would abandon her the moment I received the money.
A later message instructed my grandmother to sign a document my father planned to bring to her house.
The document was not a will.
It was a financial power of attorney naming him as agent.
My grandmother had refused.
