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By Ralph Blumenthal HOUSTON, Dec. 20 - Lillian Glasser, by all accounts, never intended to spend her twilight years in Texas. Or her $25 million fortune. A lifelong New Jerseyan, Mrs. Glasser owned a million-dollar home and a second house in Highland Park, N.J., with her husband Ben, a doctor who died in 2002. But to the consternation of Mrs. Glasser and the New Jersey authorities, Texas now has a major grip on her life and her money - a consequence of a family feud and anomalies in probate practices from state to state. After coming to Texas last February to visit her daughter, Mrs. Glasser, now 85 and afflicted with Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, fell subject to the Bexar County Probate Court in San Antonio. Placed under Texas guardianship after her daughter attested that her mother resided there, Mrs. Glasser is largely confined to a gated apartment complex in Alamo Heights, a small city surrounded by San Antonio, under 24-hour care and forbidden to return to New Jersey while a storm of litigation swirls around her. Beyond the personal drama, the case highlights the checkerboard practices of local probate courts, which govern the transfer of property from people who die or are declared incompetent. The courts are not federally regulated, but in response to a growing number of interstate disputes, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws is drafting nationwide probate standards similar to those in the field of child custody. Some states require residency, known as domicile, for a probate court to have jurisdiction. Other states, including Texas, require only physical presence. Experts say the lack of uniformity can be exploited by parties seeking legal venues where they enjoy an advantage. "These cases are popping up all over the country," said Terry Hammond, executive director of the National Guardianship Association, a nonprofit group of lawyers, social workers and other professionals seeking uniform standards. "The combination of the mobile character of society plus the demographics of an aging population combine to create a potentially volatile situation," said Mr. Hammond, a lawyer in El Paso who briefly represented Mrs. Glasser's son in the Texas dispute. The Glasser case, pitting her daughter and former guardian, Suzanne Matthews of Alamo Heights, against her son, Mark Glasser of Miami, has already consumed nearly $3 million of Mrs. Glasser's assets, accumulated over years of successful investing, and filled hundreds of pages of court records with conflicting accounts of filial devotion, financial skullduggery and elder abuse. Ms. Matthews has the support of a relative on her mother's side, David Lawrence, a managing director at Goldman Sachs in New York, while a nephew of Mrs. Glasser's, Rick Smith, has sided with Mark Glasser, as have many of her friends in New Jersey. Approached Dec. 14 in a San Antonio restaurant where she was having dinner with Mr. Glasser and asked where she would like to be living, Mrs. Glasser said, "in New Jersey." "They took me here to San Antonio, it was night," she said. Asked about her relocation to Texas, Mrs. Glasser, who appeared disoriented at times, said, "Nobody asked me." On the witness stand in June, Mrs. Glasser was blunter. "It was just like being taken by the Gestapo or something," she said. In an independent evaluation in July, Dr. Katherine E. Goethe, a San Antonio psychologist, said, "Her situation in San Antonio I would describe as a form of psychological torture, frankly." Ms. Matthews declined to comment for publication. In depositions in November and in earlier testimony, however, she said her mother was often confused and had asked to come to Texas. She said they had "a close and loving relationship where we did everything for each other." Sharon B. Gardner, a lawyer for Ms. Matthews, wrote in an e-mail message, "Unfortunately when the dispute started Mrs. Glasser was already severely demented and had no insight into her condition." Ms. Matthews brought her mother to Texas in February from Boca Raton, Fla., where Ms. Glasser has an apartment she uses in the winter, but the circumstance of the visit and how long it was to last are in dispute. On March 14, Ms. Matthews, alarmed, she said, by her mother's growing incapacity to handle her own affairs - and having already transferred her mother's assets into joint partnerships under a power of attorney - applied to become her temporary guardian. Ms. Matthews attested that her mother "resides" in Bexar County, that "a substantial portion" of her assets were in the county and that her mother was in "imminent danger" from mental incapacity. At a hearing called that same day by the probate judge, Polly Jackson Spencer, Ms. Matthews testified that her action was precipitated by her mother's effort that morning to take off in a cab with $6,000 she had just withdrawn from the bank. Mrs. Glasser opposed any guardianship, a San Antonio lawyer appointed to protect her interests in court, Karen Ellert Pena, testified at the hearing. The chain of events began, witnesses testified, with the death of Mrs. Glasser's husband of more than 50 years. In deep bereavement, she drew up a conditional power of attorney, giving Ms. Matthews the right to conduct her affairs "effective upon my disability or incapacity." Mrs. Glasser later also gave the power to Mr. Lawrence, her relative at Goldman Sachs, and moved her investments to that brokerage. In 2003 and 2004, the court record shows, Ms. Matthews created a number of financial partnerships with her husband, Gilbert, and Mrs. Glasser. Using her power of attorney, she transferred Mrs. Glasser's $25 million in assets into the partnerships, under Goldman Sachs management. Ms. Matthews acknowledged in court that that she had not informed her mother - "I did not want to hurt her feelings," she testified - and had structured the transfers so that they were effectively irreversible by Mrs. Glasser. Ms. Matthews also acknowledged using the accounts to pay for a son's college tuition and for gifts and other expenses, which she said her mother would have approved. "I act in my mother's best interest all the time in this," Ms. Matthews testified. Ms. Matthews did not disclose the size of her mother's estate in her application for temporary guardianship in March. Required to supply a general description of the ward's property, Ms. Matthews wrote "unknown." Asked later in court how she would not have known since she had recently transferred the $25 million in assets into her partnerships, Ms. Matthews said her characterization "was on the advice of counsel." Asked why she also attested that her mother "resides in Bexar County," Ms. Matthews said "that's where she was staying and so that's what I was told to put down." Ms. Gardner, her lawyer, said the asserts were not part of the probate proceedings and that the responses were proper. Since landing in Texas in February, Mrs. Glasser was granted a trip home to New Jersey in August by Judge Spencer. But caregivers overseen by Ms. Matthews monitored her visitors, and friends said they had trouble seeing her. New Jersey was also claiming jurisdiction over Mrs. Glasser. The Middlesex County Board of Social Services filed a complaint in New Jersey Superior Court in September seeking a public guardian for Mrs. Glasser as a resident of that state. Judge Alexander P. Waugh Jr. appointed Joseph J. Catanese, a lawyer in New Brunswick, as counsel for Mrs. Glasser. "When I met with her, she was very clear," Mr. Catanese, who is also the police director of New Brunswick, said of Mrs. Glasser in an interview. "She said, 'I want to live in New Jersey.' " He said that despite her impairment, doctors had agreed that Mrs. Glasser was competent to decide where she wanted to live and who her guardian should be. On Sept. 14, as Judge Waugh was issuing a temporary restraining order preventing Ms. Matthews from removing Mrs. Glasser from New Jersey pending a custody hearing two days later, Ms. Matthews chartered a jet and flew her mother back to Texas. She testified later that she had not been told of the court order. In a conference Dec. 20, Judge Waugh asked Mr. Catanese to file a report by Jan. 13 on whether the New Jersey court should try to exercise jurisdiction in the case over Texas. To Russell Verney, an investigator with Judicial Watch, which has been studying probate courts, the issue boils down to "forum shopping." "In my opinion," Mr. Verney said, "this is a case about a resident of New Jersey who amassed her fortune in New Jersey and never indicated any interest in subjecting herself or her estate to the probate laws of Texas. If anyone has jurisdiction, it should be the State of New Jersey." Saying that only a federal court can bridge the competing jurisdictions, Mark Glasser filed a civil action this month against his sister in Federal District Court in San Antonio, blocking a scheduled trial before Judge Spencer. Last month, the parties failed to agree on a proposed comprehensive settlement that would also resolve an underlying dispute about Mrs. Glasser's will, but Ms. Matthews agreed to give up her temporary guardianship in favor of a nonrelative appointed by the court, Dan A. Naranjo, a lawyer in San Antonio. Dr. Rodney L. Carry, a San Antonio physician who examined Mrs. Glasser for Mr. Naranjo, reported Dec. 13 that "her contentment and security have improved nicely" and put her life expectancy at two to four years. But Dr. Carry urged against "allowing her to control her residence." Nathan Levy contributed reporting from San Antonio for this article.
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A Feast
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