The trust didn’t just name a guardian. It contained a provision — a standard one that good estate attorneys include and that Denise clearly hadn’t read closely — stating that the guardian must act in the child’s best interest, and that any guardian found to be motivated by financial gain rather than the child’s welfare could be removed, with the funds protected.
My father had built a trap for exactly this kind of person, years before he died, hoping it would never be needed.
Denise had walked right into it.
She’d spent three months proving, on the record, that she was motivated by money and hostile to the child.
And she had no idea, because she’d never actually read the documents she was so desperate to control.
“Tomorrow,” Ruth told me, “you’re not going to walk into that hearing as an overwhelmed nineteen-year-old. You’re going to walk in as the prepared one. Your father would be proud.”
I almost cried at that.
Instead, I got ready.
PART 4
