Wills Are Easier To Challenge

21 May 2022 · 1 min

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In this short informational monologue, the speaker argues that a will alone is far more vulnerable to legal challenges than a revocable trust. He presents three specific reasons: (1) most wills are DIY documents while trusts are typically drafted by attorneys, making wills easier to dispute; (2) trusts remain effective during the grantors' lifetimes, so any claim of incapacity is harder to prove because the creators are actively involved in managing the trust; and (3) trusts include provisions for successor management and are private, whereas wills go through public probate, exposing them to challenges from family members after death. The speaker’s goal is to persuade listeners to consider using a revocable trust for stronger protection against contests.

Chapters

If you have a will and that's all you have, you need to know that it is much more likely to be challenged in court than it would be if you had a revocable trust. Oh, you don't believe me? I've got 3 reasons why. Okay, write these down. Reason 1, most wills are do-it-yourself wills. Most trusts were written by attorneys. Which one do you think would be easier to challenge? Number 2, a trust is effective during the lives of the people who created it. Those people will be involved in the day-to-day maintenance of the trust, making it much more difficult to say there was any issue with incapacitation. And one of the main ways you attack a will is to say say that the person who wrote it was not of sound mind at the time they signed it. And number 3, a trust provides that someone will come in and take over if the person who created the trust is ever determined to be not of sound mind. It's like to consider the possibility that someone in the family will come in and cause problems after we're dead. The public nature of a will in probate court makes it easier to do so. The privacy of a trust makes it difficult. Follow me.