It seemed like a loving family.

Lucille Keading’s 2015 obituary described her 65-year marriage as “the romance of a lifetime.” A few months later, her husband Lewis’ mournful obit appeared. It called him an “understanding father.”

That masked the battle between their children, who duked it out in Contra Costa County probate court rehashing tales of felonies, elder financial abuse, backstabbing emails, and anti-gay slurs to have a judge they never met serve as their umpire.

Well before their deaths, Lucille and Lewis placed their property, including their El Sobrante residence, into a family trust. Their relationships with their kids were shaky: Son Kenton spent nine years in prison and needed financial help; daughter Hilja was estranged for years because they wouldn’t accept her sexual orientation, but they’d begun to reconcile.

Yet both rallied for their parents when Lucille became ill. Both returned to El Sobrante and stayed on after she died to help their father, whose health quickly deteriorated. Lewis executed an “equalizing amendment” that a trial court found to be his last “clear, lucid” act regarding the trust. This canceled earlier amendments that favored Kenton and essentially split the trust assets between their kids.

That was the lull before the storm. While Hilja was away for a week, Kenton found an email she wrote that asked a lawyer friend for help to find “…the best bad-ass, take-no-prisoner Probate Attorney… who will not put up with the antics of my brother, a homophobic felon who has manipulated and engaged in every literal category of elder abuse… He is dangerous to me.”

Kenton, who told the court he read Hilja’s email to their shocked father, then engaged in a series of acts without telling his sister. Within days, he took the dying Lewis to a UPS store to sign a power-of-attorney document; he had his father sign a declaration absolving him of elder abuse; he executed a deed transferring the real estate out of the trust to him, courtesy of that power of attorney; and had his father sign off on a stock transfer. Then he had his father sign an amendment to the trust that removed Hilja as successor trustee.

Lewis died two days later, not even a month after Kenton showed him Hilja’s email.

Hilja promptly went to court. After 16 months and four days of trial, the judge found that Kenton exercised “substantial undue influence” over his father, constituting elder abuse. He ordered all of Kenton’s contested acts invalidated. Kenton appealed.

The Court of Appeal recently upheld the trial court on every issue, including one that means Kenton will have to pay Hilja a double-damage award of $1.5 million, plus her legal bills. The 37-page opinion includes an erudite discussion of statutory interpretation.

Protect the wishes your loved ones express in their estate documents—and be sure to consult an experienced estate attorney at the first sign of unusual activity. Keading v Keading, 60 Cal.App.5th 1115 (Cal. Ct. App. 2021)

About the Author: 

John O’Grady leads a full-service estate and trust law firm in San Francisco. His practice includes Estate Planning & Administration, Probate and Trust Litigation.