Скачать или смотреть Two Ways to Invalidate a Trust: Lack of Capacity and Undue Influence

Matthew Talbot is an Elder Law Attorney in Walnut Creek, California. Today I want to talk about ways people can contest the terms of a trust. By that, I mean that people come to me and say they are a beneficiary to a trust, and for example, there was a first trust that was done and they were a 10% beneficiary of the trust. Then a second trust was done and they were a 5% beneficiary to the trust. However, they do not think the second trust was really valid, and they lose out on 5% of the money. So, they want to try to contest the second trust to try to invalidate it. So how do you invalidate a trust? There are two main ways we can handle the invalidation of a trust. The first is that we try to argue that the person who signed the document, who is now deceased, did not have the requisite capacity to understand what they were signing. These can be complex documents and sometimes these are simple documents. There is a whole legal scheme set up to deal with whether or not the documents are complex or simple. The basic understanding is that the person signing had a mental deficit or inability to understand that they were signing a document distributing assets or naming a beneficiary or naming a trustee, or whatever the document does , and so, they truly were not signing the document. This can get very complicated because a lot of older people are in a gray area mentally. They don't believe it's 1952, or anything that makes it obvious to everyone they lack capacity. However, they may have mild or moderate impairments that make it seem to many that they do in fact have capacity. So that is the first way to contest a trust, or invalidate the trust. The second way to invalidate a trust or a trust amendment is what is called undue influence. Put very generally, this is when a person applies significant pressure on the person signing the document to either sign or not sign the document. Undue influence can be very complex legally. I am going to try to make it more simple. An example of undue influence might be someone who does an estate plan late in life and at that point a child is living with them and providing care. The child might say if you don't sign this will or trust, I will stop providing food or care, or medicine. Or, the child might say, if you don't sign this will or trust, you don't love me. If you loved me you would sign this will. And maybe the child doesn't just say it once, they say it over and over. They provide that pressure. That of course is inappropriate and is called undue influence. When there is Undue influence it means is the elder signed the document and may have understood what they were signing, but the elder did not feel like they were signing it of their own free will or they were doing it due to the pressure of the alleged abuser. Undue influence is a form of elder abuse. We handle a lot matters like that at our firm. It is always very sad, but unfortunately these types of things exist, and it is much more common than most people realize. So, what we are looking at today is lack of capacity and undue influence as two ways to potentially invalidate a trust, a will, or trust amendment to go back to earlier documents.