Flashback: Lillian Glasser case plays out in Texas and New Jersey courts

Rich N.J. woman’s offspring are scolded
December 27, 2007
San Antonio Express-News
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/MYSA122905_01A_glasser_1820379a_html11698.html

In a sharply worded order that spanks the squabbling children of Lillian Glasser, the 85-year-old New Jersey woman mired in a nasty Texas probate struggle, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery took over a chunk of the complex case Wednesday.

Since last spring, Glasser, who wants to return to New Jersey, has been largely restricted to an Alamo Heights apartment, where she spends her time watched by 24-hour caretakers.

The battle over her money and freedom is being waged in three courts in two states.

Calling the dispute a “legal fratricide” between sibling rivals that has consumed millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees, Biery’s order said “the end result … is the creation of a Glasser chess game in which Mrs. Glasser has become a pawn.”

His ruling sends parts of the case back to Bexar County Probate Court where a trial will be held over who should become the guardian of Glasser and her $25 million estate. But because the principal parties come from three states, Biery kept control over other issues.

They include Texas’s jurisdiction over Glasser’s son, Mark Glasser, various actions of her daughter, Suzanne Mathews — including her activation of a power of attorney that allowed her to assume control of her mother’s wealth — and the competency of Lillian Glasser to execute her current will and the power of attorney.

The case landed in Biery’s federal court three weeks ago after Mark Glasser moved it there just as a trial was set to begin in probate court. In his court filings, he claims Mathews is trying to cheat him of his inheritance by taking control of their mother.

“Mathews sought guardianship over Lillian Glasser’s person only to keep her falsely imprisoned in Texas,” reads one of his motions.

Mathew’s lawyers, on the other hand, accuse Mark Glasser of trying to manipulate the legal system.

“In reality, these efforts are also a thinly veiled attempt to litigate a pre-death will contest,” reads one such filing.

After reviewing Biery’s ruling Tuesday afternoon, lawyers for both sides declared victory.

“It’s a total win for Lillian and obviously for her son,” said Jo Reser, lawyer for Mark Glasser.

“We feel very strongly that we got railroaded into probate court on matters dealing with how Suzanne appropriated and converted her mother’s money.”

A lawyer for Mathews said the ruling gave him just what he wanted.

“I’ve got my issues back in probate court where they belong. The judge has remanded both the guardianship of the person and the estate back,” said Ricardo Cedillo.

There is nothing in Biery’s order, however, that promises quick relief for Lillian Glasser. She has been pleading to return to her home in New Jersey since shortly after she was brought to Texas by her daughter in February.

A month later, Lillian Glasser was found incapacitated by a San Antonio doctor after Mathews said her behavior had become bizarre and irrational.

Mathews was made temporary guardian, but stepped down after her brother and a cousin sued.

In December 2004, Mathews had activated a power of attorney and taken control of most of her mother’s assets, eventually including her two houses in Highland Park, N.J.

Except for a one-month break, Lillian Glasser, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hasn’t been allowed by the legal system to leave Texas.

In interviews and court testimony, she has said she wants only to return home. Friends say she is beginning to fear she will die in Texas.

“I’m just stranded here. What am I supposed to do? They have stripped me of everything,” she complained last week. “The thing that bothers me most is that I won’t get back to New Jersey.”

Cedillo said his client has nothing to do with her mother’s staying in Texas.

“She’ll go someplace when the doctors say it’s in her best interest,” he said. “My client is taking care of her mother. She’s not holding anyone hostage.”

Karen Peña, who is Glasser’s court-appointed lawyer in San Antonio, said her client does not want any family member named her guardian.

“She wants nothing to do with her son, daughter or nephew,” Peña said. “She needs a caretaker, not a guardian, and her preference was an old friend.”

New Jersey adult care officials have complained for months that Glasser is being held hostage.

They say that by being kept medicated and socially isolated, she is being subjected to psychological torture.

They say that proper jurisdiction for her case is in New Jersey.

“Mrs. Glasser has testified in open court that she wants to be ruled by the courts of the state of New Jersey, where people understand her best, where they can grant her the dignity and respect she deserves,” said Lawrence Rosa, a lawyer for New Jersey Adult Protective Services.

On Jan. 13, a judge in New Jersey is expected to decide on asserting jurisdiction over Glasser and appointing a guardian there.

In his Tuesday order, Judge Biery asked whether the real dispute is over Glasser’s wellbeing or her wealth.

“Cynics might wonder whether these adult children’s level of care and concern would be quite the same if their mother were impoverished and needed financial contributions from her children,” he wrote.

Captive of courts in Alamo Heights
December 4, 2007
San Antonio Express-News
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/MYSA120505_1A_glassercase_8030ad9_html8814.html?showFullArticle=y

“The Ward,” as she is identified in some court pleadings, is a wealthy, 85-year-old New Jersey widow who spends her days cloistered with health care workers in an Alamo Heights apartment.

She is never alone or free to leave.

Her phone calls are monitored and visits must be approved by a lawyer. Trips to dinner, even with immediate family members, also must be cleared, and the attendant always comes along.

For nine months, Lillian Glasser has been an unwilling captive and the central figure in a contentious family legal fight over her independence — and her $25 million fortune.

The ongoing battle has cost Glasser her freedom and left her desperate to go home.

“I want to be in New Jersey. I was born there. I lived my life there. I feel happy there,” she said in a brief telephone interview last week.

“I’ve been very strong. But you know how you lose your identity? It’s a terrible thing. Please, if you could do anything, get me out of here,” she pleaded.

The Glasser case has drawn the ire of New Jersey officials who say Texas courts are overreaching their jurisdiction. With millions already spent on the legal battle, a judicial watchdog group says the case smacks of forum shopping and has become a cash cow for lawyers.

“She’s being held hostage. They are not allowing her to come to New Jersey because they fear they will lose jurisdiction,” said Lawrence Rosa, a lawyer for New Jersey’s Adult Protective Services. “It’s an appalling case. She is being psychologically tortured. That’s the consensus in New Jersey.”

A recent investigation by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, however, found no truth to allegations of abuse and exploitation.

Legal battle

The widow of a prominent physician who died in 2002, Glasser was, until this spring, a lifelong resident and pillar of the Jewish community of Highland Park, N.J.

But in mid-February, while Glasser was on her annual vacation in Florida, her daughter Suzanne Mathews suddenly fired Glasser’s longtime caretaker and brought her mother to Texas.

According to Mathews, who lives in Alamo Heights, her mother’s behavior became bizarre and irrational.

By March 15, a Texas doctor had found Glasser incompetent and Mathews was appointed her temporary legal guardian. Several months earlier, Mathews had taken control of most of her mother’s assets by activating a power of attorney.

The moves sparked a bitter legal brawl in Texas with Mathews’ brother, Mark Glasser, and a cousin filing suit to block Mathews’ guardianship.

Officials in New Jersey are trying to have the case decided there. But with the case active in the Texas courts since March, they can do very little. And it doesn’t look like things will be resolved soon.

Last week, a proposed settlement fell apart when Mark Glasser said he refused to sign an agreement because it would not guarantee his mother’s return to New Jersey.

A trial set for today in Bexar County Probate Court to decide her permanent guardian is on hold.

On Thursday, Glasser’s lawyers filed to move some of the case to federal court.

While Mathews declined repeated requests for an interview, her brother has been outspoken.

“I just want my mother to go home to New Jersey,” Mark Glasser said.

In court filings, he accuses his sister of bringing their mother to Texas as part of a long-term scheme to make her “a virtual economic prisoner” and to strip him of his fair inheritance.

“Suzanne Mathew’s greed has known no limits and has no decency,” reads a motion filed by his lawyer, Jo Reser. That motion goes on to accuse her of “totally taking control of her mother’s fortune and person.”

In another court filing, Mark Glasser accuses his sister of “having used the temporary guardian powers to hold her mother hostage in order to complete the conversion of her mother’s estate to her only sibling, Mark Glasser’s detriment.”

Mathews “brought her mother here to get total control of her,” Reser said.

Mathews’ lawyer, Ricardo Cedillo, shrugged off the charges.

“Those are scurrilous allegations and we’re not going to run from them in court. Everything Mrs. Mathews has done has been part of a very well-thought out estate plan that Mrs. Glasser put into effect years ago,” he said.

“There are serious disagreements as to whether or not Mrs. Glasser has all her faculties available to her. She is not a well person. I think the family is doing everything they can to help her. The daughter certainly is,” Cedillo said.

He backed away from an earlier offer he made to provide a list of names of Lillian Glasser’s Texas friends and relatives who supported her remaining in Texas.

“I will present my evidence at the trial, not in your newspaper,” Cedillo wrote in an e-mail.

Forum shopping?

Legal fees and expenses in the case, mostly paid by Glasser’s estate, already have reached $2 million. On Friday, a dozen lawyers — some billing $300 an hour or more — attended a brief hearing.

An observer said the case demonstrates abuses of the Texas probate system.

“It’s a poster child for court appointees enriching themselves off the estate of someone who never wanted to subject themselves to that court,” said Russell Verney of the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which is doing a study of the Texas probate courts.

He said the case also is an obvious example of forum shopping.

“They didn’t probate it in Florida or New Jersey. Perhaps they had a reason to believe that the Texas court would be more favorable to the applicant than the ward,” he said.

Legal experts say Texas laws on establishing residency and on the appointment of a temporary guardian are easily met, and they say Glasser’s case is not that unusual.

In Glasser’s case, a doctor’s statements that she was incompetent and her daughter’s claim that Glasser lived in San Antonio were sufficient cause to have her daughter named as guardian. A temporary guardianship, however, lasts only 60 days. Mathews later relinquished it after her brother and cousin challenged it.

Among Glasser’s old friends and relatives in New Jersey, her plight has provoked anger and disbelief.

Many believe she is competent.

Ellen Smith, a niece who lived near Glasser in New Jersey, said she seemed fine last fall before departing for Florida on her annual winter sojourn.

“Before she left, she was paying her bills by herself. She was going to New York to the beauty parlor and to the theater,” Smith said.

She said Glasser likewise showed no signs of incompetence in January when they dined together in Florida. But when Smith saw her again in August, six months later, she was not the same woman.

“She was greatly diminished. She was upset. She was with unfamiliar caregivers. She was slurring her words. She was unkempt, and this was a woman who was always immaculately dressed and coifed,” Smith said.

In July, Glasser made her only court appearance on her own behalf, testifying briefly in Texas. Asked if she had intended to stay in Texas after being brought here by her daughter in February, she reacted with emotion.

“No, no, no, no, no. I didn’t expect to stay at all. In fact, they took me at night. … It was just like being taken by the Gestapo or something. And they say, ‘You don’t have to worry about a thing. Everything will be fine.’”

Glasser also testified she knew nothing of her daughter’s plan to become her guardian and make her a permanent resident of Texas.

And, she said, she wants her case decided in a New Jersey court.

“New Jersey is where I consider my home. And that’s where I want to go. I want to go back to New Jersey. I just have never been mortified like I have here,” she said.

Return home

In mid-August, upon the recommendation of six doctors and her court-appointed guardian Jody Helman, Glasser was allowed to move back into her house in New Jersey. But she remained under the care of private caregivers, appointed by a Texas judge, who sharply limited her contact with her old friends and family members.

People wishing to see her had to call Texas beforehand to arrange a visit.

Freddi Jeck, who grew up in Highland Park, described the experience of one old friend who showed up without an appointment.

“Thelma comes to the door with fruit and flowers. The caretaker slams the door in her face. ‘You can’t come in.’ Thelma bangs on the door again. ‘You can’t come in. You have to call Texas to make an appointment,’” Jeck said.

“The caretaker hits the panic button and calls the Highland Park police on this 70-year-old lady standing at the door. And Lillian hears it all,” she said.

The arrangement lasted less than a month.

On Sept. 14, Rosa, the New Jersey Adult Protective Services lawyer, appeared in Superior Court there asking for an order to keep Glasser from leaving the state and complaining of the conditions in which she was living.

“There are a series of events that are transpiring in order to sabotage Mrs. Glasser’s ability to stay in New Jersey,” Rosa told the judge.

“Your honor, I am truly concerned. This is a resident of the county. The court in Texas is coming in here and telling us we are going to have that lady living under medieval laws,” he said, referring to the restrictions placed on Glasser.

Hours later, after the judge signed the order, Glasser was on her way back to Texas, flying in a private plane that left from a New York state airfield.

The lawyers say they did not violate the order, because they were unaware of the restraining order forbidding Glasser from leaving New Jersey issued earlier that day.

The sudden move was justified, according to court-appointed guardian Helman, because of a drastic deterioration in Glasser’s condition.

“She is not taking her medications regularly. Last week her blood pressure was alarmingly high and at dangerous levels. She is much more confused, paranoid and has delusions and hallucinations,” wrote Dr. Michael Freedman of New York City, one of the six doctors who had earlier recommended she return to New Jersey.

“Overall, to date the experiment in New Jersey is on the verge of failure. She has deteriorated since leaving San Antonio and may suffer great harm,” he wrote, recommending she return to Texas.

Dr. Irving Kasoff, a neurosurgeon and a friend of Glasser for two decades, also was one of the six physicians who recommended she return to New Jersey. He said she has a mild dementia but is not incapacitated.

“Make no mistake. She was a woman who, with the help of one devoted housekeeper, was capable of running her household, and she maintained a spotless home,” he said.

But even after she moved back into her old home in Highland Park, she remained under the jurisdiction of Texas courts and in the control of Texas caretakers.

“It was exactly the same as Texas. The psychological torture continued. She was being socially isolated and they continued her on 500 mg of Seroquel (an anti-psychotic drug), and she had trouble getting up and standing on that dose,” Kasoff said.

Kasoff fears Glasser may not survive her legal ordeal.

“It’s all about money. Lillian has become an annuity for a lot of lawyers. … Once it got into the court system down there, the daughter lost control,” he said.

Daughter ordered to repay millions
March 15, 2007
San Antonio Express-News
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/MYSA031607_01A_glasser_ruling_370d8b2_html23143.html
An Alamo Heights woman has been directed to return roughly $20 million to her elderly mother, Lillian Glasser, whose estate was the subject of bitter family feuding in and out of Texas and New Jersey courts.

Glasser, 86, was described as thrilled by the ruling of Judge Alexander Waugh of New Jersey’s Middlesex County. The judge’s order hammered the daughter, Suzanne Mathews, and denied her bid to be appointed as Glasser’s guardian.

Glasser “finds it unbelievable that it’s finally over,” Karen Peña, her court-appointed attorney in Texas, said Thursday after speaking with her client at a winter retreat in Florida.

Mathews declined to comment on the March 9 opinion in which Waugh concluded she’d isolated Glasser, breached her fiduciary duty to her and exerted undue influence over her in a bid to control an estate once valued at $25 million.

“I found the testimony of Ms. Mathews and her husband to be, at significant times, purposefully forgetful, evasive or simply untruthful,” wrote the judge.

Waugh invalidated Glasser’s will dated December 2002, drafted with help from Mathews after Glasser’s mental capacity was deemed suspect.

That leaves in force a will drafted by Glasser in October 2002 that treats the wealthy widow’s two children equally, Peña said.

The judge also ordered the dissolution of a limited family partnership that Mathews had created in 2004, purportedly to set up a tax advantage for the estate, and funded with $24 million of Glasser’s money.

Peña couldn’t say how much money remains in the partnership, over which Mathews had control.

Waugh said Mathews also must account for the estate’s expenditures and reimburse Glasser for any that are deemed by the court to be inappropriate.

Sibling rivalry

The legal fight shaped up as an extension of a youthful sibling rivalry between Mathews, now 55, and Mark Glasser, now 59, of Florida.

Waugh said Mark Glasser acted in good faith to assist his mother, although his effectiveness was hindered by “take no prisoners” tactics that included sending inflammatory e-mails and advising his mother to not take her medications.

He said Mark Glasser also was “less than candid” at times as a witness in the 34-day trial last summer where he fought his sister’s bid to be appointed guardian.

Before jurisdiction in the case was claimed last spring by New Jersey, where Glasser had long resided, Mathews held her for months in Texas against her wishes and initiated proceedings here to have guardianship established.

Mathews contended she was concerned about her mother’s faltering mental capacity and acted to protect her health, dignity and assets.

But, in his 82-page opinion, Waugh repeatedly labeled Mathews’ testimony incredible, and her actions — under her mother’s power of attorney — suspect.

Reached in Florida on Thursday, Mark Glasser said, “I’m happy that it’s over.”

He’s heard talk of an appeal, but hopes neither his family, nor any other, must face such a painful legal ordeal again.

“I’d like to hope that attention is focused on the need for judicial reform in the probate and guardianship arena,” Mark Glasser said.

In his ruling, Waugh cited Mathews’ failure to disclose to her mother transfers of estate assets, to tell her mother’s doctors of another doctor’s diagnosis and to share the doctors’ findings with some estate attorneys.

More than once, he said, Lillian Glasser was presented with proposed changes to her estate plan on the heels of surgery, while susceptible to “post operative delusions.”

“I am convinced that Ms. Mathews used undue influence to cause her mother to make material changes in her estate plan to the benefit of Ms. Mathews and at the expense of Mr. Glasser at a time when Mrs. Glasser was particularly vulnerable,” Waugh said.

New guardian

Concluding that Glasser is currently incapacitated, he appointed as her personal guardian Joseph Cantanese, her court-appointed attorney at the trial, and financial planners Neuberger Berman as guardian of the estate.

The litigation in New Jersey was begun by Rick Smith, Glasser’s nephew, after she was brought to Texas in 2005 by Mathews and wasn’t permitted to return to New Jersey or Florida, as she desired.

Waugh found Smith’s motives pure and his actions prudent in advising Glasser to seek outside advice before signing off on estate plans prepared by Mathews’ lawyers.

Reached in Florida on Thursday, Smith said, “I’m very pleased with the judge’s ruling and the restoration of my aunt as a person, and her property.”

The two-year legal odyssey pitted kin against kin and was an emotional drain for Glasser, but, Smith said, “For a woman who’s been through the ordeal that she’s been through, she’s doing reasonably well.”

Mathews’ attorney, Ricardo Cedillo of San Antonio, said the trial proved that Mathews had not kidnapped her mother, but he described the proceeding as pointless in some respects.

“The other side made us go through this long hearing and we ended up with exactly what we had before we left Texas,” he said, asserting Mathews had long been open to someone else being named Glasser’s guardian.

That’s not reflected in the judge’s ruling, and Peña said: “It’s not the truth as I know the facts to be. (Mathews) fought to be guardian … to the bitter end.”

Peña, who was appointed to represent Glasser two years ago, said Waugh’s opinion was thoughtful and thorough.

A Family Feud Sheds Light on Differences in Probate Practices From State to State
Ralph Blumenthal
December 28, 2005
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/national/28probate.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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.