When it comes to will challenges or estate plan contests, one issue that sometimes comes up is that of testamentary capacity. This refers to the mental capacity that a person has to make an estate plan. They need to be fully aware of the documents that they are drafting or updating.
But this can become problematic with the rising rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Additionally, older people are more susceptible to these diseases, and the onset can be slow. So they may not know that they are suffering from a specific ailment, but beneficiaries or family members may later claim that it influenced the estate plan.
Late-in-life changes
For instance, say that someone makes an estate plan that is roughly equal. They have multiple children, and they split up their assets between all of them.
However, near the end of their life, they begin to experience significant mental decline. Perhaps they get confused about who people are or don’t even recognize their own beneficiaries. This decline leads to conflicts, and after one such issue, they get frustrated with a beneficiary and remove them from the will entirely.
That beneficiary may claim that the elderly individual did not have the proper testamentary capacity to disinherit them. They were just confused. They were sick. They didn’t know what they were doing, and their final estate plan does not reflect what they actually would have wanted.
Resolving a dispute
For family members who are involved in such a dispute, testamentary capacity is going to be a major issue to consider. They must understand all of their legal options at this time.
