Evidence Needed To Successfully Contest A Trust Or Will

[Music] Hi this Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video I'm discussing the type of evidence you need to successfully have a trust or will contest granted by the court a lot of times the first thing that a client will say to us when we first speak with them is my mother never would have done this or my father never would have done this or my grandmother would have never done this and everybody knows that and why isn't that enough to get the trust or we'll thrown out of court and the answer is because our trust will laws require more evidence than just that so if you were to say well my mom never would have disinherited me so when she did this will a week before her death it must be invalid because she never would have done that that in and of itself isn't evidence that is certainly your opinion and it may even be a correct opinion and it may even be backed up by other people who agree with your opinion but what the court needs in order to rule to overturn a trust or will is evidence admissible evidence that can be presented in court and you have to have grounds for overturning a document meaning there has to be either lack of capacity or undue influence or fraud there has to be some legal basis for it the fact that you don't like the will or the fact that you don't think your mother would have ever disinherited you that in and of itself is not a legal basis to set aside a will so for example with capacity you have to show for a will that the testator did not understand the nature of their property they didn't understand the nature of their relations their kids and grandkids and they generally did not understand that they were signing a will those are the three legal element elements you must have and you notice that none of those elements have anything to do with whether or not mom would have ever disinherited you yes we're trying to get to her intent that's true but we're also trying to show that she didn't have the capacity to express that intent because of a lack of capacity and that takes evidence not just an opinion the same is true for undue influence there's elements for undue influence you have to show the victim was so acceptable done to influence because they had a mental condition that caused them to be susceptible to undue influence you have to show that somebody acted badly they they isolated the person they manipulated them they controlled the necessities of living these are the type of things that you must prove in court none of those really have anything to do with the fact that your mom never would have done this your grandmother never would have done this so it is obviously a very natural inclination I think for most people to say my mom never would have disinherited me can't we just get the will tossed out well we might be able to get the will tossed out but it's not going to be because of that type of evidence or those type of opinions it's going to going to be because we can go out and find good solid evidence that is admissible in court in order to prove that that will or trust should be overturned. [Music] [Applause] [Music]