Chapter 4 - WHAT RITA THOUGHT SHE WAS GETTING
Rita did not know everything.
That surprised me.
She knew enough.
But not everything.
Victor had told her the house would become his after the transplant.
Not because kidney donation somehow transferred property.
Because he claimed I had agreed to restructure our estate.
According to Rita, Victor said I was planning to place the Brookline property into a marital trust.
He would become trustee during my recovery.
Eventually, he could direct the property according to the new estate plan.
Rita believed she would receive it after Victor and I separated.
At least that was her first story.
It changed once attorneys started asking questions.
The draft told a different story.
The proposed deed would have transferred my individually owned house into an LLC called Beacon Residential Holdings.
Victor controlled the LLC.
Rita was named as successor manager.
The transfer was supposedly for “estate planning and asset management.”
I had never heard of Beacon Residential Holdings.
It had been created six weeks before my surgery.
Victor’s attorney did not create it.
A document service Rita regularly used for real-estate clients did.
That mattered.
The plan was not brilliantly sophisticated.
It depended on speed.
Get me through surgery.
Wait until I was medicated and exhausted.
Use the power of attorney if possible.
If not, place papers in front of me as part of the mountain of postoperative forms.
Victor believed I would sign because I trusted him.
If I asked questions, he would call it estate planning.
If I resisted, he would wait.
He thought he had time.
Then Rita dropped the draft under my bed.
Two days after surgery, Helen visited me.
She placed copies of the LLC filing on the tray table.
“You’re not listed anywhere.”
“Good.”
“The deed draft isn’t executed.”
“Better.”
“Your title remains unchanged.”
I closed my eyes.
Then asked the harder question.
“Why would Victor think this could work?”
Helen looked at me carefully.
“Because many bad schemes are built around confidence rather than law.”
May you like
That sounded like Victor.
He had spent thirty years believing certainty could substitute for permission.
