Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the relatives of a deceased person to remain dissatisfied with the will left to him and believe that they were treated unfairly. Most often, it is in such situations that people try to challenge the will, but this can only be done if certain conditions are met.
The most common reasons for challenging a will
The most popular, but often difficult to prove, reason for rebutting a will is the inability of the person who made it to reason reasonably at the time of signing. We can talk about a mental disorder, alcohol or drug intoxication, a serious illness. If this can be proved, the court recognizes that the testator was not able to evaluate his actions, manage them and understand their true meaning, and therefore the document with his signature cannot be considered valid. It should be borne in mind that the will can be challenged even if a person took potent medications on the recommendation of a doctor, and they, according to doctors, could affect the awareness of his actions. In this situation, it will be necessary to collect medical certificates.
A will can be challenged if it can be proved that the person did not sign it of his own free will. For example, if he was threatened with reprisals, blackmailed, tried to obtain registration of the document by deception, or committed other illegal actions. This also applies to cases where there are doubts about the authenticity of the will. Handwriting examination will help to solve the problem.
Finally, there are persons who have the right to a compulsory share of the inheritance, and if their names were not mentioned in the will, they have the right to challenge it and demand the transfer of part of the property for their use. Most often, in such cases, we are talking about disabled close relatives.
Reasons to challenge a will
In some cases, a witness must be present when making a will. In particular, we are talking about situations when a document is signed in a hospital. This rule also applies if a soldier or sailor bequeaths his property. If there was no witness and the document is not notarized, the will can be challenged. The same applies to situations when the witness does not know the language in which the will is written, or he is incapacitated or could not be responsible for his actions at the time the document was drawn up.
A part of the will may be challenged if the text is illegible, or if it cannot be interpreted unambiguously and it turns out to be difficult to understand what exactly is being said in certain paragraphs. This does not apply to situations where the text contains minor misprints, blots or misprints, as well as punctuation and spelling errors that do not impede the correct understanding and unambiguous interpretation of the text.
