You Want to Contest What You Are Getting As An Inheritance...Be Careful!
So your mother has always said that you were to receive her wedding ring upon her death. Then the unfortunate day comes where your mother passes away. In getting ready to probate her Will, you come to find out that she is passing her wedding ring onto your sibling and the Will was changed just a few months before she passed. You are mad and now want to fight the Will.
Well before you go out and hire an attorney to fight the Will, make sure you really want to fight. If you do fight, some states may say that you are now out of the Will totally through the use of what is called a “contest clause”. What a contest clause generally states is that if you contest the Will or file any other proceeding in relation to the estate, that you lose your rights as a beneficiary as a penalty. So your fight over the ring may cost you all of your other inheritance as well.
The policy behind the “contest clause” is to prevent lawsuits against estates where someone is unhappy with what they are getting. When someone passes away, some of the first emotions that arise are anger and greed. These are a recipe for disaster.
Some states, like Florida, have stated that contest clauses are unenforceable. Florida statute 732.517 states “A provision in a will purporting to penalize any interested person for contesting the will or instituting other proceedings relating to the estate is unenforceable.” So any estate planning document in Florida which includes a contest clause can be viewed as if the clause were not in the document.
So the moral of the story is…before you decide to file a lawsuit over something left to you in an estate plan, make sure you consult with an estate planning attorney as to whether your state validates or invalidates a contest clause.
To learn more about contest clauses and their enforceability, please consult our estate planning attorney at Wood, Atter & Wolf, P.A. located in Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
