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Contesting a Will in Indiana.

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whatamess

Guest
About a month before our mother died she changed her Will
mainly to remove my living brother as her co-Executrix. I was and still am the Executor of mother's Last Will and Testment.

ITEM II of mom's Will:
I am cognizant of the fact that I am the mother of three children. I am specifically excluding my son,(his name) as a benficiary from my estate. The reasons for this decision are personal. After thoughtful condsideration, (his name) is,
however excluded from my estate. This exclusion is intentional and not an oversight.

ITEM III:
I hereby bequest one-third of my estate to my son, (me)
one-third of my estate to (my living brother's name},one-
third of my estate to (the son of the son she excluded.)

My brother who was named and excluded from this Will has been dead for four years.

If my brother contests our mothers new Will and wins what will happen? We all live in Indiana.

My brother has a greed problem. He doesn't want to share the estate with our nephew. Mother's estate was bequested to me and my brother in the original Will.



 


ALawyer

Senior Member
I'm not a lawyer from the Hoosier state, but in most states one of 2 things would happen: 1. if the court threw out the new Will the old one would take over, or 2. she would be deemed to die without a will, and her estate would pass by Intestate distribution. In the latter case (assuming 3 kids, one dead with 1 child, no surviving spouse) the estate would be split in 3, with the child of the deceased brother taking his father's share, just as under the new Will.

If your mother was of sound mind (no Alzheimers or other serious mental problems), and the new Will was properly executed (and if a lawyer wrote it (as it sounds) and supervised the execution) notwithstanding the error in the fact your brother was dead, it likely would be admitted as it seems to be a lawyer's mistake and not the product of mistake, duress or fraud.

Few Will contests succeed. All cost lots of money and tie up estates, sometimes for years. Most create terrible family bitterness. In this case what you are talking about is 1/6th more of the estate that he'd get. Extra lawyer fees easily could eat that up in most estates.

If yo
 

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