Contesting a Will? … Don’t Get Left Out
|
Full marks! Dangerous, Invincible and Bad…but at least the King of Pop made a Will. However, this hasn’t stopped mother Katherine Jackson, allegedly egged on by father Joe (totally ignored in the Will), from mounting a legal challenge and contesting the Will that leaves everything to The Michael Jackson Family Trust.
She is seeking to wrest control of the USD500 million estate from the executors appointed by the Will, notwithstanding a ‘no contest’ clause in the Will that disinherits any beneficiary who challenges its validity or its terms. |
It will no doubt be a Thriller, and there will be Blood on the Dance Floor at the end of it all. Ho, Ho.
In the UK, the number of people contesting a Will is rising steeply. In the last two years, the number of cases coming before the Courts has risen threefold. Our own experience bears out the trend - our Private Client Unit launched a free Contesting A Will legal advice service last week and has been inundated with enquiries.
This is due to a number of identifiable factors, including the increasing number of long-term ‘common law’ marriages, the number of people relying on cheap and inadequate ‘DIY Wills’, successive remarriages leading to rival clans of children, avaricious second wives and husbands, the increasing value of estates due to rising property prices and the increasing number of people leaving all of their estate to charitable or political institutions.
Increasingly, people are contesting a Will on the grounds that the testator may not have been of sound mind or have had ‘testamentary capacity’ when making the Will.
Notably, a Will was successfully challenged last year on the basis that the deceased had left all of his £8 million estate to the Conservative Party. The court accepted evidence that the benefactor was delusional when he made the Will!
The courts are showing increasing willingness to order that the costs of cases contesting a Will should be paid out of the estate itself or shared between the parties. Additionally, the increasing availability of legal costs insurance cover and conditional fee agreements means that fewer would-be litigants are deterred by the costs risk of launching a legal challenge.
The moral being …make a proper Will …unless you want the entertainment to continue after you’ve gone!
|
