4 Reasons to Contest a Will

Despite what you see on TV, there are only four limited grounds on which to contest a will:

• The will wasn't signed in accordance with state law. If a will fails to meet the very stringent execution standards, then it won't be deemed to be a will. If it's not a will, it can't transfer your property at death. This has led to many people believing that they have a perfectly valid estate plan-but instead leaving their heirs in for an unpleasant surprise because the will wasn't executed properly. 
  
  
• Lack of testamentary capacity. This invalidates a will on the grounds that the person executing the will was incompetent to do so at the time they did it. You most often see this issue raised regarding an older person who modifies their will and removes some people who were beneficiaries under a prior will. The fact of the matter is that the level of capacity required to execute a will isn't very high; it's actually lower than the level of capacity needed to execute a contract. In essence, in order to be competent to execute a will, a person needs to know (1) the nature and value of their assets, (2) who would receive their assets if they didn't have a will, and (3) the legal effect of signing the will. Someone would have a long road ahead of them to prove you didn't have the capacity to execute your will. It's hard to come by historic evidence of lack of capacity. 
  
  
• Undue influence. This is the biggie when it comes to will contests. The issue is that if a person is in a confidential relationship with you, then the person might be able to cause you such duress about your will that you lose your independence of thought process. What if you rely on one of your daughters to cook and clean for you, and she hints that unless she gets the house, she won't be able to continue helping you? Or, what if a hired caregiver threatens to withhold your medication unless you change your will to benefit them? Or, perhaps your nephew helpfully drives you to his attorney to create a new will, which just happens to leave everything to him. When a will has unequal distributions, or distributions to non-family members, a court is reasonably concerned that the will was created out of fear that the favored beneficiary would cease caring for or even harm the person making out the will. Nine months before you died, were you threatened into changing your will to name your caregiver as the primary beneficiary? Or has your caregiver helped you for eight years, you don't see your relatives, and you just got around to making out your will nine months before you died? 
  
  
• Fraud. You give a person a contract to sign, and it turns out someone slipped a will into the document and the person didn't know they were signing a will. The will is invalid because it clearly isn't an expression of the person's intent. Another fraudulent situation is where somebody slips pages into the middle of the will. This is why best practices dictate that the person making out a will or revocable trust initial each and every page.