A Legal MinuteWill contests & capacity
What Counts as Undue Influence in Arizona
The short answer
An Arizona case sets out several undue influence factors, including a confidential relationship, meaning intimate knowledge and access, like a spouse, child, medical provider or possibly an attorney. Labels alone may not settle it; in one described matter, a court found none with a helping friend, an attorney not licensed in Arizona, given how they acted.
From the full episode Contesting Wills in Arizona: Key Insights and Challenges (19:15).
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Transcript
We do have a case here in Arizona, and of course I was so ready and I'm blanking on the name, but it literally sets out the requirements for an undue influence claim. I believe it's seven or eight kind of metrics.
A couple of them are: were they in a confidential relationship? Confidential relationship is somebody that has intimate knowledge and access. So, a spouse is automatically deemed to have a confidential relationship, a child, a medical provider, could be an attorney. Those are all confidential relationships. But does it really apply under the statute?
We've had cases where, you know, somebody had a friend help them, and that friend was a licensed attorney, but they weren't licensed here, and the court actually ruled there was not a confidential relationship between the two of them because that's not how they were acting.
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