In the early summer of 2019, Spokane real estate magnate Harlan Douglass walked into the office he founded decades earlier, and stood still.<\/p>\n
He was lost.<\/p>\n
Douglass, who with his late wife, Maxine, built a billion-dollar real estate empire, struggled that day to find his office. His longtime employee, Deanna Malcom, stood up and reached out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI walked him, by hand, to his office,\u201d Malcom said. \u201cThen we both cried for a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had never been around anyone with dementia. It was so hard watching someone you loved, who you looked up to, decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several months earlier, two of Douglass\u2019 adult children, Lanzce Douglass and Stacey Douglass Boies, found a way back into their father\u2019s life after a decade of estrangement.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also when Harlan, who died in 2023, cut contact with his eldest son, Harley, with who m he had worked for years.<\/p>\n
Harley helped his parents for some of the five decades they built a financial empire of several hundred properties that currently generate millions of dollars every month in rent and lease payments, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Those changing relationships are now at the heart of a legal fight, currently in a weekslong trial in Spokane County Superior Court, that offers a rare window into the inner workings of one of Spokane\u2019s most powerful families as the siblings seek to secure sums of money that most Lilac City residents would find unimaginable.<\/p>\n
The trial, before Superior Court Judge Jacquelyn High-Edward, centers on the circumstances by which Harlan Douglass changed his will in 2019.<\/p>\n
Two meetings in the spring of that year shaped the current dispute.<\/p>\n
Lanzce and Stacey joined Harlan on April 22, 2019, at the Tacoma office of a lawyer Lanzce hired, where Harlan signed documents that gifted Lancze and Stacey promissory notes valued at $45.9 million each, and other notes that gave $13.9 million to each of the siblings\u2019 five children.<\/p>\n
The notes, totaling $155 million, would be payable upon Harlan\u2019s death. But other documents, signed by Harlan, also made Lanzce and Stacey his durable powers of attorney.<\/p>\n
In a second later meeting with those two siblings, Harlan then signed documents to void an earlier will that would have split his estate, estimated in court testimony to be valued between $600 and $700 million, equally among Lanzce, Stacey and eldest son Harley.<\/p>\n
The new will, signed in May 2019, changed those shares each child would receive.<\/p>\n
The updated will provided 65%, or more than $400 million, to Lanzce, and 35%, or more than $200 million, to Stacey. Any other monies from investments or life insurance policies would be split evenly between Lanzce and Stacey.<\/p>\n
Harley wasn\u2019t invited to either of those 2019 meetings where documents were signed by his father, who was diagnosed with vascular dementia and Alzheimer\u2019s disease, according to court records.<\/p>\n
But Harley wasn\u2019t left out of the new will that was signed in the presence of Lanzce and Stacey.<\/p>\n
The new will left Harley $1,000.<\/p>\n
The current lawsuit, filed by Harley, seeks High-Edward\u2019s approval to revert to their father\u2019s earlier will, signed in 2018, which would have split his estate equally between his three children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evidence will establish that during a year-long scheme ending in August of 2019, Lanzce and Stacey executed (a) plan, the goal of which was to gain control of not only their father\u2019s estate, but of their mother\u2019s as well,\u201d attorney Steven Hassing wrote in court records. \u201cIn his diminished state, Harlan could no longer distinguish the truth from the lies Lanzce and Stacey were telling.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy exploiting his cognitive impairment, Lanzce and Stacey succeeded in turning their father against the one child with whom he had consistently shared a genuine and enduring relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
But attorneys for Lanzce and Stacey, Jason Burnett and Karolyn Hicks, have put forth an argument that essentially is \u201cprove it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarley will not be able to prove these claims because he lacks sufficient evidence to prove that Harlan D. Douglass executed his May 2, 2019, will under the undue influence of Lanzce, Stacey or Jeri Via, or that Harlan was fraudulently induced by any of these parties,\u201d Hicks and Burnett wrote. Via became Harlan\u2019s partner after Maxine died.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather \u2026 the May 2019 will reflects Harlan\u2019s intent to treat his children differently based on substantial lifetime gifts to Harley, and Harlan\u2019s ever-fluctuating relationships with his three children.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Crush you\u2019<\/p>\n