List of Articles
Article A: What is a Will Contest?
Article B: What is Undue Influence?
What is a Will Contest? By: Dennis J. Shea
A will contest is a challenge to the admission of a will to probate. Unlike some other states, California does not have a separate court for probate cases. In other words, there is no "Probate Court" per se. A probate case is merely a civil case filed in the superior court. The case is opened by filing a petition seeking admission of the will to probate. The petition can be filed by any interested person.
"Contesting" the will means objecting to its admission to probate. "Admission to probate" is a confusing label for what takes place. The issue is not the same as issues involved in admission of testimony or papers into evidence. Rather, "admission to probate" means that the court accepts the validity of the will. It then becomes the obligation of the personal representative (also known as the executor or executrix) to carry out the terms of the will in accordance with the testator's intent.
A will may be contested even after it is admitted to probate. It is more difficult to contest the will if it has already been admitted, and there are time limits for doing so. But it can be done if the circumstances are right.
What is Undue Influence? By: Dennis J. Shea
One of the methods of contesting a will is to argue that the will is the product of the testator's having been unduly influenced by someone. Usually the person who is alleged to have exerted undue influence on the testator is someone who benefits from its terms. Frequently, this person is a friend or a relative of the decendent who took care of the decendent in his or her final years. However that isn't always the case. The beneficiary could be one of several siblings who gains at the expese of the others. There are many other types of situations in which allegations of undue influence can arise.
Frequently the beneficiary was in a close relationship with the decendent. This is known as a "confidential relationship." For example, the beneficiary might have been a child of the decendent, a sibling of the decendent, or the like. If a person who stands in a confidential relationship withthe testator exerted pressure on the testator and gained something through the will that he or she ordinarily would not have received, the will may be invalidated.
In the absence of a confidential relationship (an certain situations pertaining to care custodians and drafters of the will) it is ordinarily the burden of the contestant to prove that there was undue influence. However, once it is established that there was a confidential realtionship between the testator and the beneficiary, the burden shifts to the beneficiary to disprove the existence of undue influence. This shift in the burden of proof can be important, because sometimes there is little direct evidence of the circumstances of the execution of the will.