Can’t the Court Just Toss Out the Last Amendment?

[Music] Hi this is Keith Davidson with Albertson and Davidson and in this video I'm talking about what the court has the power to do with a trust or will amendment so if you have a case where you have a trust amendment that you don't like maybe the trust was amended at the last minute disinheriting you a lot of times people who aren't used to this area of the law will say well why can't the court just toss out the last amendment everybody knows it's invalid everybody knows my mom or dad wouldn't have wanted to do that why can't the court just toss it out rather than having to go through this big long litigation process it really comes down to what our legal system is based on which is due process of law and what that means from a practical perspective is that both sides have to be given a fair opportunity to bring in their evidence to court the court has to decide whether or not that evidence is admissible using the rules of evidence the California evidence Code and then whatever evidence is actually admitted by the court the court or the jury depending on who's making the decision then gets to decide the facts of the case who's telling the truth who's lying who's winning who's losing that's the process that you have to go through the court really doesn't have the power to decide on a trust amendment without giving everybody a fair opportunity to be heard and in court and that's what we call a trial and unfortunately in our system it can take some time to get to a trial because everybody has to also be given a fair chance to do discovery to go out and find the evidence that's relevant to their case so typically a case might take anywhere from 10 months to 18 months to go from start to trial it could take longer it depends on the type of case it depends on the issues that arise it depends on the courts calendar the lawyers calendar the parties calendar it all just depends on the circumstances of your case but what cannot happen is the trust cannot simply be thrown out the trust amendment cannot simply be thrown out by the judge just looking at it and saying I don't like this I'm going to get rid of it it has to be an evidentiary process that's fair and equal to both sides of the case. [Music] [Applause] [Music]