Undue Influence and Lack of Capacity Will Contest

A Philadelphia undue influence and lack of capacity will contest lawyer can help you if you believe that a document is not legally valid. An undue influence and lack of capacity will contest attorney in Philadelphia will handle your case on your behalf and file all of the appropriate paperwork if you believe that the person who signed the will was not of a sound mind to do so. Ensuring that loved ones and family members are not unfairly left out of a will is a common concern. There are two safeguards that protect a testator from being taken advantage of when a person has declining mental capacity.

If a person has been influenced in a way that is illegal, such as an outside party convincing the testator to create a new version of the will in which the influence stands to benefit in a big way, this information can be instrumental in bringing forward legal claims to recover a previous version of a will. There’s so much to consider that it can be helpful to get the outside perspective of your lawyer before you even move forward with the case so that you know what to anticipate.

These are known as the safeguard of capacity and the safeguard of being free of undue influence. If you believe that a will has been put together with lack of capacity and undue influence as primary issues, you need an experienced attorney to help file your dispute case. A Philadelphia undue influence and lack of capacity will contest lawyer will file the legal paperwork necessary based on your intended grounds.

In order to revise or to create a will, a testator in Pennsylvania has to have the appropriate capacity to do so. Capacity means that the testator understands their individual actions including their personal family relationships, the nature of the property and the impact of the will on both people and property. A person who has been diagnosed with a cognitive condition such Alzheimer’s could lose complete capacity to create or to revise an estate plan. In other situations, knowledge of a partially weakened mental state might cause a beneficiary to exploit this condition for their individual gain. The other complex aspect of estate disputes and will contests in Pennsylvania has to do with safeguard of being free of undue influence. Undue influence is an allegation against a beneficiary who had a special relationship with a testator and later benefitted from an update to the will or the creation of a whole new will. Claiming that a special relationship was used to manipulate the estate plan of the testator for personal gain is known as undue influence. Three factors must be established in order to claim that someone was unduly influenced. First of all, there must have existed a confidential relationship between the beneficiary and the decedent; secondly, the decedent must have had weakened intellect at the time that he or she signed or updated the documents; and there must have been substantial benefit to the beneficiary who was exerting his or her undue influence. Cases associated with undue influence are very complicated and sensitive for numerous reasons. This is why the factual as well as the interpersonal assertions can be very difficult. Establishing the confidential relationship factor is often the easiest because the burden of proof will then shift to the person holding the confidential relationship. That being said, there are still many different questions that must be answered and the support of an experienced estate planning attorney is necessary in these situations.