Understanding Lack of Mental Capacity When Challenging a Will

To create a will in Florida, the person making or certain the will, must have the mental capacity to understand what he or she is doing. But that can be a vague definition, and aging itself can have many nuances–many of us know older people who sometimes are very sharp and on the ball, but at other times, can sometimes seem as if their mental capacity isn’t what it used to be.

What Do You Have to Prove?

Lack of mental capacity to make a will, is not the same as total incapacitation; unlike incapacitation, there need not be any judicial determination that someone is not able to handle his or her own affairs.

In some cases, someone may have had a documented mental illness at the time that they created a will, such as someone who was previously diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s. But it isn’t always that easy to determine a lack of mental capacity.

To challenge a will on the basis that the creator (the deceased) lacked the mental capacity to create the will in the first place, the challenger (the person or beneficiary seeking to overturn, invalidate, or challenge the will), must show a number of factors.

The deceased, when making the will, must have understood the nature of their own property, what they owned, and what they were doing with the property in the will. They must understand the state of their property, and where or to whom it will go. They must understand the nature, and effect of their decisions.

How to Prove Lack of Capacity

Of course, at the time a will is challenged in probate court, the person who made the will is not around to be asked these questions, or evaluated, so we look to the behavior of the deceased, before his or her death, and see if he or she was capably and knowledgeably handling his or her own affairs.

Medical records may be used, if they are available to determine capacity, as may testimony of friends and family, who can testify as to the deceased’ mental state and cognitive capabilities at the time the will was made (note also, that it is the mental state of the deceased when the will is made that matters–not the mental state of the person at the time of his or her death).

Relationship to Undue Influence

While people who suffer from mental incapacity or lack of mental capacity may also be unduly influenced by others, they are mutually exclusive ways to challenge a will–in other words, someone who was not influenced at all by any external person, may nonetheless have lacked the mental capacity to make the will in the first place; lack of capacity and undue influence are separate things and different ways to challenge a will, even though they often do accompany each other in reality.

Call the West Palm Beach probate lawyers at The Law Offices of Larry E. Bray today for help with your probate law case if you have a probate case or want to challenge a will or trust in probate court.

Source:

flcourts.gov/content/download/404573/file/Testamentary-Capacity-Guardianship-Assessments.pdf