The Big Challenge: Episode One — The Intro to Trust Contest Lawsuits

I want to welcome you to The Big Challenge. We’ve done a lot of videos over the years where we talk about things like lack of capacity, undue influence. These are legal grounds for overturning a trust or a trust amendment. But we’ve never put together a comprehensive course that goes from start to finish. And that’s what The Big Challenge is all about. We’re going to walk you through a trust contest lawsuit from beginning to end so you can understand what challenges are ahead in your trust or will contest case.

When a parent dies and a child learns for the first time that they’ve been totally disinherited, the effects can be devastating. This is especially true where the parent was known to be suffering from a mental or physical illness, maybe the parent was isolated, maybe were manipulated. Whatever the case, the results are all the same. A child or maybe all of the children receive nothing from the trust. It’s a legacy lost. It’s an inheritance that has been stolen. It’s an abuse of the trust beneficiaries. But what are you going to do about it and that’s where your trust contest lawsuit begins.

There are basically three scenarios that we see.

• There’s the complete disinheritance, that’s where you’re not going to receive anything under the trust of the trust document.
• There’s the reduced share scenario, where your share might have been substantially cut back, maybe you were going to get an equal half or third and now you’re getting $5,000 which is effectively being disinherited.
• Then there’s the locked share scenario, that’s where you’re still getting something under the trust but it’s being help in a trust that you don’t control and maybe somebody who you don’t get along with like a brother or sister is controlling your inheritance which can also be effective disinheritance because if somebody who you don’t like and don’t get along with has control over your money, there’s a good chance you’re not gonna get it.

The Four Big Challenges

Every trust will lawsuit has four big things that you have to grapple with.

1. The Law – you have to understand what your legal rights are and what your legal rights are not.
2.  The Procedure – there’s also the procedure that you have to deal with. Our court system comes with a lot of procedures you have to understand how to navigate those procedures.
3. The Evidence – there’s gathering evidence. That’s not always easy trying to get evidence that is not just relevant but that is ultimately going to be admissible in court and the evidence code sets forth all kinds of rules about what can come into the court and what cannot. So, trying to find admissible evidence is a big part of your case.
4. The People – the fourth important point is people. Your case has to do with a lot of different people. If you think about it, the reason why the law is not black and white is that really the law is a people’s business. You have people on the other side, the opposing attorney, the opposing parties, you’ve got the judge who is a person, you have witnesses that are all people. You have to be able to navigate all these different people in order to get to a successful resolution of your trust contest case.

The Big Warning

We also want to give you a big warning right upfront. When you are the party who’s trying to contest a trust or trust amendment, you are the one who has the burden of proof. That’s a big deal because the law presumes that any document that is in writing and signed by the decedent, your parent for example, the law presumes that document is valid. So the people who are in favor of that don’t have to do anything, they just show up with a signed document and say here you go and the judge has to presume that that’s a valid document. But it’s your job as the challenging party of the contesting party to come and prove why that document is not valid. You have to use a legal ground to do that so you’re not going to overturn a trust or trust amendment just because you think it’s unfair or because you think your parent never would have done this to you or because you think that it shouldn’t be this way. You have to have a legal ground to overturn a trust amendment and legal options are things like lack of capacity or undue influence. Once you have that legal ground, then you can move forward and try to overturn a trust or trust amendment.