She listened without interrupting and took notes and then she said three things.
First: the invoice was a demand without a contractual basis, and I was not obligated to respond to it as though it were a debt.
Second: the estate had a process that required Daniel’s cooperation for certain things, particularly the sale of the house, and the legitimate way to manage this was to move forward with the estate administration and deal with the demand through the estate negotiation rather than as a separate lawsuit.
Third: the note from my mother about the roof advance was meaningful but not a will provision, and its effect would depend on whether Daniel agreed to honor it as a term of the estate settlement. If he refused, I could potentially make a legal argument, but legal arguments are expensive and slow and not guaranteed.
“What would you advise?” I asked.
“Document everything clearly and negotiate from that position,” she said. “You have good documentation. Use it. Estate disputes that go to litigation often cost more than they resolve.”
I followed her advice. The process took longer than I wanted and shorter than I feared, which is probably the best you can say about an estate process.
There were weeks of waiting for documents and responses and signatures. There was the conference room meeting that I’ve already described. There were two phone calls between the meeting and the signed agreement where Daniel raised issues that I think he raised because he wasn’t ready to fully let the narrative go, and which Patricia handled with a patient firmness that I admired.