My late husband Arnold’s family cabin on Loon Lake, Wisconsin, has been solely in my name since his death eight years ago. Last month, his nephew Bryce filed a probate court petition seeking guardianship over me and my property, claiming at seventy-three I was “increasingly unable to manage” the cabin and my finances. I learned about it from the court clerk’s office, not from Bryce – his attorney had been slow to formally notify me. I called my own lawyer that same afternoon, then pulled thirty years of tax returns, maintenance receipts, and permits from my filing cabinet.
At the hearing, my attorney and I presented an unbroken thirty-year record: every property tax payment made on time, every maintenance receipt, dock permits filed annually, insurance current, and bank statements showing I managed six figures in retirement assets without a single late payment or irregularity anywhere. Bryce’s petition, by contrast, offered no medical evaluation, no doctor’s testimony, nothing beyond his own opinion that an “aging aunt alone” managing property was inherently risky.
The judge dismissed the petition from the bench, calling it, in her words, “unsupported by any evidence beyond the petitioner’s assumptions about age.” She noted for the record that competent adults are entitled to manage their own affairs and property regardless of how a relative feels about the arrangement, absent actual evidence of incapacity.
Bryce has not spoken to me since the hearing. I opened the cabin myself this June, same as every year, dock and all. I think about how close a filing like that can come to succeeding if a person doesn’t have decades of paperwork to fall back on – and I’ve started keeping a copy of every document in a safe deposit box now too, just in case someone else in the family gets similar ideas. Age is not incompetence. Sometimes proving that just takes a very full filing cabinet.
Get Heartwarming Stories in Your Inbox
Join thousands of readers getting uplifting stories every week.
