I couldn’t help it — I called the attorney and asked for an update, and then poured a bunch of questions at him. He was very nice, still very grateful, and said he’d stop by and give me the end result in the next few weeks.

It turns out his client is still alive, in his own home, and a nurse comes by every so often to check on him and dope him up on morphine. He was so doped up on morphine yesterday that he wasn’t conscious enough to get the information from the attorney that his divorce is final. So the attorney’s going to try again today. He found out the schedule for the morphine injections so he will try to get over there before his client’s next dose at 6pm tonite.

The ex-wife has moved back into the house, “under the pretense of taking care of him.” Every day, she brings a little more of her stuff in. The attorney called her “a professional leech,” and said anyone who knows her calls her a leech. She’s about 15 years younger than her now ex-husband, and doesn’t work. When the attorney went in on the 18th to have his client sign the final papers, he was stunned to find the wife there, and stuttered a bit. They did kick the wife out of the guy’s bedroom so the attorney can talk to his client alone. The attorney asked, “Do you still want to get that divorce?” The client insisted that he did. “Are you sure?” “Yes.” So the papers were signed while she was outside the room.

It looks like she may try to claim or steal various things. The attorney suspects she’s already gone through the house and taken the stock papers and things like that. There’s an executor to the estate who wants the ex-wife out of the house, but they can’t do anything without the client’s consent, since he’s still alive. They’ll have to seek legal means (“unlawful detainer”) to kick her out of the house after the client passes away. The executor said that he’s okay with her stealing little things like the husband’s watch or loose bits of money or jewelry, there’s not much they can do about it at this point, and it’s only going to be a thousand bucks’ worth of random stuff, but at least they have the big items secured. The attorney said they have people in their office that also does probate, so they’re gonna follow this all the way through and make sure the ex wife gets nothing.

He’ll let me know in a few weeks if he was able to relay the good news to his client.

**Addendum: I can’t believe I forgot this tidbit. The man’s will gives everything to his high school sweetheart, whom he never ended up marrying but became his best friend. The lawyer was going to do everything in his power to make sure the best friend/sweetheart got everything instead of the ex-wife, the client’s will be done.