Taxation & Estate Planning

Pleading Requirements in Will Contests, and Why Litigation Is So Expensive

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

Clients often ask me, "why is probate litigation so expensive?" The main reason is that the law tends to behave like an unruly beast. Some questions posed to me are easy to answer -- if you want to know the requirements for executing a valid Will in Illinois, I can give them to you. But other questions are much more difficult to answer.

Take, for instance, pleading requirements for a Will contest. Most Will contests include allegations of lack of testamentary capacity (the person who signed the Will didn't know what he or she was doing) and undue influence (someone "forced" the person who signed the Will to do it). As you might imagine, there's a lot of proof required to win a Will contest -- that's as it should be. But what about getting in the door, and being allowed to prove your case through discovery, etc.? The first step in a Will contest is the filing of a petition. The second step in almost every Will contest is for the other side to file a motion to dismiss the petition, on the grounds that it "failed to state a claim for which relief can be granted."

There is no magic book to turn to in order to find out whether a petition will survive a motion to dismiss. Instead, attorneys have to look to caselaw:

Lack of Testamentary Capacity

Two very old cases -- American Bible Society v. Price and Anlicker v. Brethorst -- suggest that pleadings for lack of testamentary capacity don't have to be very in-depth. But then there's this curious Estate of Sutera case from the 1st District in 1990. It seems to suggest that conclusory statements are insufficient, but it's hard to tell. On the one hand, a very well-known book on Illinois probate states that Sutera does not apply to the issue of testamentary capacity generally, but applies only in cases where the petition includes allegations of an "insane delusion." At least one subsequent court case implies the same thing. But Sutera never mentions the phrase "insane delusion"!

That being said, my experience in court has been that judges still view American Bible Society and Anlicker as setting forth the law on pleading lack of testamentary capacity. But I suppose it depends in large part on how the attorneys frame their arguments, and the judge's take on the caselaw. It is, however, an attorney's job to make sure he or she understands and can argue for or against any of the cases that may come up at the hearing on this issue. And reading and understanding cases takes a LOT of time.

Undue Influence

Undue influence requires more in-depth pleading, but there appear to be (again, "appear to be," since there's no answer set in stone) two ways to approach it:

1. You need to make a "specific recital of the manner in which the free will of the testator was impaired." OR

2. You need to show that the person you are accusing of undue influence had a fiduciary relationship with the person who signed the Will (aka the Testator), that the Testator depended on the person and reposed trust in the person, and that the person "prepared or procured" the Will.

Of course, no case says the above, and clearly indicates that you have two paths to take in proving undue influence for motion to dismiss purposes. Again, this is something of which the petitioning attorney must convince the judge.

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).