A then-solicitor thought late author Colleen McCullough was being controlled by her husband during a 2014 meeting about updating her will, a court has heard.
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Piria Coleman told the NSW Supreme Court Dr McCullough was very unwell and it seemed like she'd been left without essential care during the October meeting.
"Colleen was present but she spoke very little. She was virtually mute or non-communicative at the time," Piria Coleman said on Wednesday.
The author's estate is at the centre of a legal battle with her widower, Ric Robinson, accused of unduly influencing her to leave him everything days before her death in January 2015.
Dr McCullough had previously requested her estate to the University of Oklahoma Foundation.
Ms Coleman, who is certified as a barrister in Victoria, said the will wasn't updated during a second October meeting, which "fizzled out" because the author was so unwell.
However, in a letter to Dr McCullough later that month she said an updated will was being held in a security packet.
Ms Coleman told the court it a was lie "on its face" but one needed to "read between the lines" and take it in the context of another attached document.
"It was a set of dual instructions but to protect her," she said.
She said in an affidavit filed in court that she wrote the letter to appease Mr Robinson and go along with his wishes, but not Dr McCullough's.
The lawsuit has been brought by Dr McCullough's friend and executor Selwa Anthony, who said the author and Mr Robinson had separated less than a year before her death.
She said Dr McCullough told her in July 2014 that Mr Robinson had taken a mistress, and that she'd kicked him out for good.
But within weeks they had reconciled, with Dr McCullough saying she couldn't afford a night carer and he needed the money.
"I was sad because that wasn't what she really wanted to do," Ms Anthony said.
Under cross examination by Mr Robinson's lawyer David Murr SC, she also said it never occurred to her that Dr McCullough may have changed her mind about cutting him out of her will and leaving her estate to the university foundation.
Mr Murr had earlier said Ms Anthony needed to accept the "glaringly obvious": that a new document was executed in October 2014.
Ms Coleman's letter to Dr McCullough showed that she regarded and treated that document as a will, he said.
The hearing continues.
Australian Associated Press
