Post By: Dana SunderlinAlthough 99% of wills tend to make it through probate court without a problem, some wills have actually been known to get thrown out in court for not meeting certain legal requirements. There are several grounds for having a will thrown out, including age, mental state, content, and witnesses, among others. Challenging a will because of an issue with age is extremely rare, however it can be a problem if the maker of the will was not 18 years of age or older, and if they were younger than that they must have been living in a state that permits younger persons to make a will. Another reason wills are contested is if the maker of the will was not of “sound mind” when they made it. This means that the person must have known what a will is and that they were making one, knew who they were responsible for providing for (such as a spouse or child), understood what they owned, and had the ability to decide how to distribute their personal property. In terms of content, a will is required to contain certain information, or else it can be deemed invalid. An example of this is that if a will does not clearly state that it is the will of the person who wrote it, it would not pass through court. In respect to witnesses, a will can be thrown out if it was not dated and signed in the presence of at least two adult witnesses, whom are not named to inherit anything in the will.
In addition to the chance that a will is thrown out in court for the previous reasons, a will can be challenged in court, although this is extremely difficult to do successfully. Generally, when family members choose to challenge a will, relations between disputing parties are often irreparably destroyed. The biggest reason why wills are challenged is that there is a reason to believe that the owner/writer of the will “fell victim to the undue influence of another.” This means that what is written in the will does not truly represent the person’s freely-made choices. For a court to uphold this argument, there must be strong evidence that an outside party influenced or coerced the person into putting certain things in their will.
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