Although it is not common, the validity of a will can be challenged on numerous grounds. A successful challenge to a will can invalidate either a section of the will or the entire will itself. The most common grounds for contesting a will are:<\/p>\n
Undue influence – the testator was improperly influenced by a close friend or caretaker to make unusually large distributions to that person
\nLack of testamentary capacity – the testator did not have the required mental capacity to make a valid will
\nInsane delusion – the testator was suffering from a belief which he adhered to despite all evidence to the contrary and that belief materially affected a provision in the will
\nFraud – the testator was intentionally misinformed about a matter relating to the distribution of his estate and this misinformation caused him to materially alter the way that he directed that distribution<\/p>\n
In order to contest a will for any of these reasons a person must have standing. Essentially, standing is the right to take a legal action. In order to have standing to contest a will a person must either be named as a beneficiary in the will, or be eligible to inherit from the estate if the will or a provision of the will is deemed to not be valid. Contests and challenges require legal proceedings and can be long and costly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although it is not common, the validity of a will can be challenged on numerous grounds. A successful challenge to a will can invalidate either a section of the will or the entire will itself. The most common grounds for contesting a will are: Undue influence – the testator was improperly influenced by a close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,10,25,24,11],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wills","tag-asset-protection","tag-estate-planning","tag-probate","tag-wills","tag-wills-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/protectingyourassets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}