A Legal MinuteWill contests & capacity
When Inheritance Changes Raise Red Flags
The short answer
When a change favors one person, such as a helpful neighbor, over family, the firm first looks at higher-priority factors: whether the change made that person a primary beneficiary, whether the benefit fits the relationship and the help given, and capacity, meaning the ability to make the changes.
From the full episode Contesting Wills in Arizona: Key Insights and Challenges (19:15).
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Transcript
The other thing we look at is: did the change make them a primary beneficiary? So, for example, did this person say, "Look, my family's far away, my neighbor helped me with groceries, taking care of my dog, driving me around. I gave them 5%, or I gave them $10,000 when I died as a thank you, versus they got my whole house and now my kids are all disinherited"?
So, that's what we look at, as well as: is what was provided, is the relationship kind of congruent to the, let's call it a reward, even though that's probably not the best word for it. Those are kind of the two things we focus on.
We do look at, you know, capacity, that's part of it, which is the ability to make these changes. You know, again, I've seen people that were in memory care facilities, and people took them out of the memory care facility, took them to an attorney and brought them back. So, those are really kind of the three out of the seven to eight that are kind of the higher ones that we look at first.
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