Lance Garrick tricked his cognitively impaired 95-year-old father into leaving four kids out of his will.
Highlands Ranch. Six months prior my father had revised his will to include five of six of his children.
I have the email to prove that. Then one day in August 2019 he happened to mention that Lance had been “helping” him with his will.
I wondered why Lance would be helping my father with his will when, that past March (2019), my father had mentioned he’d been working on it (by himself with no “help”).
At that time, in March, my father’s mental functioning had been 95%, but by August, he was noticeably compromised.
After he passed the following January, I came to realize (after looking through his medical records and noting the ever-increasing BUN lab numerical value over time) that the brain fog had been the result of declining kidney function.
Kidneys filter toxins from the body by creating urine. As kidney function declines, toxins build up in the bloodstream. This is called uremia and is measured by the BUN lab result.
The toxins end up in the brain, causing cognitive problems and severe grogginess.
But while my father was alive, we all thought it was just age related mental decline.
Anyways, Lance saw an opportunity to manipulate our father into changing his will.
So that day in August, when my father mentioned that Lance had been “helping” him, I was struck with a bad feeling.
I had this intuitive, gut feeling that the “help” was actually a manipulation for Lance’s benefit. Why had my father needed “help” when the will had been all laid out the preceding March?
I asked my father to let me read the will, though I didn’t reveal my suspicion.
He was unable to access the document in his computer, saying he’d lost the document’s password. He tried and tried, but it wouldn’t open.
Over the next two weeks I brought up the topic when we were in his kitchen, but he kept saying he was too tired to try (the then-unknown-to-me uremia).
Then another brother of mine, “G,” visited from out of state in September. We were at the kitchen table. I mentioned to “G” that we should look at the will because Lance had “helped” our father revise it.
“G” immediately became concerned and urged our father to take the tiring trip to his den and get into the document.
It took a while, but G finally found the password. I sat in the den behind G while he studied the document, while our father sat to the side half asleep.
My gut feeling had proved true, but the revision was worse than I’d ever imagined. The original will included equal inheritance to five of the six kids.
The left-out child was my oldest sister who had been estranged from the family.
The August revision – the one that Lance had “helped” with – blatantly also left out “C,” my other sister, plus “G” and me.
Only two kids were beneficiaries: Lance and a third brother.
The will stated that Lance and the third brother were the only beneficiaries because all the other kids were financially well-off.
In early August Lance had lost his job, and this factoid was included in the will – stated as a reason for excluding the other kids.
“G” and I immediately smelled a very rotten fish because as of August, my father was incapable of drafting the complex verbiage due to his cognitive state.
In fact, by then, my father was hardly even on the computer and had claimed it was very difficult for him to use the keyboard due to a chronic hand/finger problem called Dupuytren’s contracture.
Yet Lance would eventually insist that our father had composed and typed the verbiage!!
The verbiage’s composition required high executive thinking that was beyond my father’s capacity.
It was obvious Lance had composed it and had lied to my father about what it had actually said.
This would have been easy to do, because my father had also been complaining for quite some time that his eyes hurt to look at the computer screen!
Lance knew of all these deficits, and G and I easily pictured our selfish, greedy brother convincing our 95-year-old father to sit back while he (Lance) altered the will, then falsely reading back to him what it said, getting our father to agree.
My father would have never left me out of the inheritance, as I was the one who took care of him, including driving him shopping, setting many doctor appointments, sitting in on those appointments, shopping for him when he could no longer do it, speaking to his doctors and nurses over the phone, monitoring his medications, making “emergency” trips to the drug store to get incontinence supplies, arranging for home blood draws and home nurse visits three times a week to re-wrap his leg ulcers, setting up the daily home care aides, and anything else that a 95-year-old, physically disabled man with failing kidneys could need.
G lived out of state, and a third, local brother visited only once a week for two hours – the other brother whom Lance left in the inheritance.
The left-out sister “C” was also out of state. I was literally my father’s only familial caregiver.
Without a doubt, G and I knew that our father would have never left ME out of the will. It wasn’t an issue of who needed money the most. It was an issue of gratitude.
Let’s suppose in my old age, a relative is my caregiver. It wouldn’t matter to me if that relative was a millionaire. Out of sheer gratitude, I’d leave a nice inheritance for that person.
Besides, as G had pointed out, financial status could change on a dime. Who’s to say that in the near future, my successful website wouldn’t go south, or that Lance wouldn’t find a very well-paying new job?
The ensuing text correspondence between Lance and G further verified Lance’s manipulative role.
For instance, after G discovered the password, he texted Lance, telling him he was going to look over the will. Lance then demanded that G not access the document. Hmmm…
All hell broke loose after Lance learned that the will was restored to include the five kids and that an eventual meeting with an attorney was scheduled.
It turned out that my father, all along, had also wanted to leave something for his housekeeper, his church and 10 grandchildren.
With Lance’s version, Lance and the third brother would have been the only beneficiaries.
The hell that broke loose was Lance sending very nasty lengthy emails to G that really upset G’s wife – who then blasted Lance with a scathing (and rightfully so) text.
G had, figuratively speaking, piloted the plane that uncovered the manipulation.
I never told Lance that I was the one who had given that plane to G. I told myself, “Now’s not a good time.”
Every time I came close to revealing that I’d been behind the whole thing, something came up that made me thankful I’d kept my mouth shut.
For example, I eventually had to go to Lance’s new house to pick up my father’s death certificate, which I needed to obtain my inheritance from his bank account.
But now that every speck of dust has settled, I’m perfectly fine if Lance and Julie Garrick come upon this blog post.
Had I never urged G to talk our father into gaining access to the will document … I would have been in for a sickening shock once my father passed – the shock of being excluded from the inheritance.
Though I would have immediately suspected Lance’s involvement, a little piece of me would have also always wondered if my father had truly meant to exclude me – and the idea of this possible rejection would have been a permanent knife in my side. And I would never be able to ask him how he truly felt.
In the months following our father’s passing, G and C unearthed emails between my father and Lance that took place in June 2019 – while my father was still pretty high functioning cognitively.
Lance had begged our father to give him $30,000 to help with a downpayment on a $540,000, six-bedroom house. Yes, you read that right. At the time, Lance had three kids: 14, 5 and 3. AND…at that time, Lance KNEW he might lose his job!!!!!
He had also attempted to trick ME into giving him $50,000.
G and C had discovered that the $30,000 was supposed to be an advance on Lance’s inheritance.
But somehow, Lance kept this payout a secret at the time – one that was discoved by G and C only AFTER our father’s passing. G told me that subsequent to this discovery, he’d had a phone conversation with Lance and had recorded it, further capturing evidence of Lance’s scheme.
(It’s legal to record a phone conversation between two people as long as one of them is aware of the recording – in this case, G.)
In short, Lance owes every beneficiary (including the housekeeper and 10 grandchildren) a prorated amount of money.
However, nobody plans on suing at this time. If we ever did, we’d have a big head start, because I have years of experience proofreading will dispute deposition transcripts.
At the time all this went down, Lance was leasing a $70,000 vehicle for his wife Julie (who doesn’t work outside the home) and a big SUV for himself.
Lance Garrick continues to live in that $540K house in Highlands Ranch almost two years after losing his job. How is this possible?
Either he found a new job but for some reason has not posted it to his LinkedIn account, or, he’s living off of multiple pensions and has been financially well-off all this time.
Lance Garrick, Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Julie