Grounds for Will Contests

There exist several common reasons that most often lead to the need for hiring a probate attorney who can contest a will in court. Perhaps the most frequent is that of undue influence. This means that a close friend, family member or even caregiver somehow manipulated the executor of the will into distributing their assets differently than they would have normally. If this can be proven by you and your probate lawyer, then the contents of the legal document will need to be reevaluated.

Other complications that can result in a will's inaccuracy are a lack of sound mind or memory, duress and delusion. These are all mental forms of insanity which can influence the way a person makes decisions. When the executor of a will is experiencing any of these symptoms at the time of the document's creation, the will could exhibit greatly altered versions of the executor's origination intentions. Fraud is another problem that has made its way into the formation of some wills. Some individuals have managed to change the conditions of the will without the executor even knowing. In these cases, the fraudulent behavior will not be discovered until the time of the reading. All of these behaviors can led to unintended repercussions after a person's passing, and all of them are grounds for contesting a will.