Earlier this week, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers to have a lawsuit dismissed over a family feud regarding the “care and finances of her 88-year-old father because he” passed away on September 22, 2021. The papers were filed in Marshall County Chancery Court and seek to end the court dispute she’s been engaged in with her stepmother, Aleita Fitch, 80.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch; image courtesy of The White House via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org

The dispute began back on April 1 when Aleita sued Lynn. Why? Well, it turns out that the attorney general “moved her father from an Oxford hospital in late March without his wife’s permission to another hospital before finally transferring him to a nursing home,” according to Aleita’s attorney, Ray Hill. As a result, Aleita did not know where her husband was and could not see him for 78 days.Additionally, Hill alleged in the suit that Lynn “sent state bodyguards unannounced to Aleita Fitch’s home, the family farm, and the hospital where Bill Fitch was being treated, and they took money, firearms, and personal belongings from the house without permission.”The attorney general pushed back against the allegations and said “she did not want her stepmother knowing where Bill Fitch was being treated because Aleita Fitch was emotionally and verbally abusive.” Her lawyer, John Mayo, said Lynn decided to move her father after discussions with her father’s physician. Mayo added that “a hospital staffer filed a vulnerable adult complaint against Aleita Fitch after voicing concerns about her mistreatment of her husband.”According to court documents, when “Lynn visited her father in the hospital, he appeared confused, delirious and malnourished, had limited mobility, and was generally unable to care for himself.” The documents claim that Aleita “failed to tell her and her sister about a stroke and heart attack their father had in January.” To make matters worse, her father had also been diagnosed with dementia, another condition that Aleita failed to tell Lynn and her sister.During the dispute, Aleita accused Lynn of “making business decisions for her husband, including the decision to shut down operations at Fitch Farms, a hunting retreat where guests can stay in the home of Confederate general and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Lynn pushed back against those allegations as well and said, “she did not seek sole control over her father’s finances but wanted a conservator appointed to prevent Aleita Fitch’s squandering and endangerment of assets.”

Sources:

Mississippi AG seeks to end family lawsuit after dad’s deathStepmom: Mississippi AG used state bodyguards in family feud