The Power of Attorney
Chapter 07 - The Power of Attorney
Susan produced a document Eleanor did not remember signing.
It granted Susan broad financial power of attorney.
The signature looked genuine.
The date was three days after Eleanor’s minor stroke the previous year, when she had been heavily medicated.
Susan claimed Eleanor had requested the arrangement.
Eleanor remembered signing hospital forms, but not that one.
Arthur urged her to speak with Michael.
Richard accused Arthur of turning their mother against her family.
Then Eleanor’s bank card stopped working.
Susan had frozen several accounts “for protection.”
Eleanor drove to the bank and learned that Susan had also attempted to transfer the lake property into a family trust controlled by herself and Richard.
The bank delayed the transfer because the deed contained an old ownership irregularity.
Half the property had once belonged to Arthur’s father.
Charles Whitmore had acquired it through a debt settlement shortly after Arthur left town.
Michael investigated.
The deed had been notarized by the same director who ran the unmarried mothers’ home.
Eleanor realized her father had not merely separated her from Arthur.
He had destroyed Arthur’s family financially, taken their land, and used part of that wealth to strengthen the Whitmore estate.
The lake house where Richard spent summers had been purchased with the remains of Arthur’s childhood home.
Eleanor confronted Susan.
“You knew I did not understand what I signed.”
Susan’s expression broke.
“I was protecting you.”
“From whom?”
“From Arthur. From those granddaughters. From anyone who thinks loneliness makes you foolish.”
Eleanor heard the cruelty beneath the concern.
“You think I belong to you.”
Susan cried then.
She said she had spent years caring for Eleanor while Richard failed and strangers stayed away. She feared losing the inheritance she considered payment for sacrifice.
Eleanor understood the exhaustion.
She did not excuse the deception.
She revoked the power of attorney and hired Michael as her independent counsel.
That decision began the war.
Richard filed a petition declaring Eleanor mentally incompetent.
Susan supported it.
May you like
And Arthur received a diagnosis that made every legal delay more dangerous.
His heart was failing.
