How To Contest A Will If You Feel It Wasn’t Legally Made

A death in the family can often lead to family members coming together and the bonds getting tighter. All too often, however, the opposite happens and it can tear families apart. Often, the person who passed away was the glue that held things together. And when they pass arguments happen. Usually over the will and how much everybody is supposed to get.

If you feel that you have been unfairly left out of a will, or that an inheritance was far less than promised you may want to hire a lawyer to bring a case to the state probate court.

In this article, we will go over what it takes to contest a will.

Are You Able To Contest It?

Just being unhappy with the will as it is doesn’t give you the right to contest it. You have to have legal standing to do so. There are some things that will work in your favor to be able to take it to court and try to have it overturned.

But, a good lawyer like Lawler Brown Law Firm will not take on a case in which you feel slighted or that there was a verbal promise that wasn’t kept. These are not legally binding and you don’t have much recourse in these situations.

Instead, you have to have one or more of the following qualifications to have a legal standing to contest:

• You are the beneficiary of a newer will made after the one that you want to contest. This is the strongest legal standing that you have if the will you are the beneficiary in was made legally and should supersede the one in question.
• You would be an heir if there were no will at all. In other words, if you are a sibling, spouse or child of the person who died then it would make sense that you would be included in the will.
• You were the beneficiary in a prior will. If the old will had you in it and then it was done again and you were left out, you will still have to prove a case to have it overturned but you do have a good chance if this is the case.

How Can You Contest It?

Assuming that you meet the criteria above, then you have a good legal standing to take this to the probate court in your state.

The next step is to make your case. You have to outline what the problem is with the will as it is. For instance, if you feel that the person was not capable of creating a will, in other words not of sound body and mind, then they may have left you off of it by accident. They may not have known fully what they owned, what the value of it was and who the rightful heirs should be.

You may even have evidence that the will is fraudulent and was forged by somebody other than the deceased.