Preston Gaines cleared his throat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour Honor, my clients are simply concerned about Mrs. Ashcroft\u2019s declining judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Lang looked directly at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why does the court file contain a loan application with a signature that appears inconsistent with Mrs. Ashcroft\u2019s known handwriting?\u201d<\/p>\n
Marcus suddenly shifted in his chair.<\/p>\n
I reached into my coat and placed a thin folder on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe this may answer that question.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge opened it.<\/p>\n
Inside were bank statements, security footage, copies of the forged loan documents, and records showing Marcus had transferred nearly $86,000 from my account.<\/p>\n
Sabrina\u2019s face went pale.<\/p>\n
Marcus whispered, \u201cMom, you don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Lang continued turning pages.<\/p>\n
Then he stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this document shows that Mrs. Ashcroft was locked out of her own residence?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, Your Honor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge leaned back.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Gaines, you asked this court to declare this woman financially incompetent while presenting evidence that her own son may have committed financial fraud against her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody spoke.<\/p>\n
Then Judge Lang looked at Marcus.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Ashcroft, I have one question for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marcus swallowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you believe your mother would be too confused to notice what you were doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
The courtroom went completely silent.<\/p>\n
I finally smiled.<\/p>\n
Because that was the question I had been waiting for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Preston Gaines cleared his throat. \u201cYour Honor, my clients are simply concerned about Mrs. Ashcroft\u2019s declining judgment.\u201d Judge Lang looked directly at him. \u201cThen why does the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4053,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4050\/revisions\/4053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}