In Spain, “the legitimate inheritance” can’t be removed unless you specifically disown that child legally; how much does “the legitimate” amount to varies by jurisdiction. I don’t know what’s the value in Euskadi; in most of Spain it’s 50% of whatever the deceased owned (so for example right now my mother and her sister each own 1/4 of their parents’ flat and Grandma the other half, because the flat was all in Grandpa’s name - if it had been in both names, Grandma would now own 3/4, with 1/8 for Mom and Auntie each) and in Navarra it is “3€ and the right to rent common land from the town” (it used to be “3 reales de vellón and the right to rent common land”, then for 22 years it was “500pta and the right to rent common land” - apparently 1€=1 real de vellón), so peanuts. Disowning a child in Navarra is a lot more difficult than doing so under general Spanish law, but it’s also not something you need to do for economic reasons.
I guess the right thing to do is write your will and give everyone something and then order the people your don’t like’s stuff set on fire with your dieing breath. I am definitely in the it’s mine I can do what I want with it camp, I mean who seriously thinks that Bill and Melinda Gates giving their kids basically nothing is a bad idea and the court should over rule it.
In it the judge quotes the applicable statute, the caselaw interpreting that statute, and goes, in depth, over the parties, their responsibilities, duties, and prior gifts, etc.
Reading the opinion, how the women were treated and how they treated their father, I don’t really have a problem with the ruling. The testator apparently lied in his will (he didn’t give his daughter $20,000). One of daughters that he tried to disinherit is unemployed, had taken care of the testator, cooking and cleaning for him, for years. Another daughter is also unemployed and had been in contact with the family over the years. I have little to no problem with the law that requires that, if the will “does not, in the court’s opinion, make adequate provision for the proper maintenance and support of the Testator’s spouse or children, the court may, in its discretion, in an action by or on behalf of the spouse or children, order that the provision that it thinks adequate, just and equitable in the circumstances be made out of the Testator’s estate for the spouse or children.” A father has a duty to take care of his children, even if they are adults, before he can be a complete asshole with his remaining estate.
I was just thinking of this the other day: my Canadian grandfather has a great deal of money, a will with contents unknown, and four surviving children (a fifth died with no issue and a sixth has two living children). Recipe for disaster, and I’m sure people will be coming out of the woodwork to contest the will.
Of the children, he dislikes between two and three at any one time, and my mother is basically still playing the role of abused child in her 60s. [Fact: as a child she was made to eat her own vomit; confess to fornication in front of her church at age 15 after—wait for it—being seen talking to a boy at school; made to go out naked in the snow as punishment; and of course physical beatings.] She martyrs herself for this abuser, cooking and cleaning for him as in the OP’s case. Justifying it to herself by saying she’ll get the inheritance, but the sociopathic bastard is no doubt going to leave her nothing because he wants to keep the land intact. (Side note: Mom gets major props for not passing on the cycle of abuse to me.)
Grandfather and aunt belong to incompatible insane religions. If she can prove she was disinherited because she exercised freedom of religion, would that override his wishes? Uncles one and two are stepchildren, adopted as small kids over 65 years ago but never really accepted. If they are excluded, do they have a case? Even if they’re left a dollar or some such pittance? What about grandchildren? If my mother is excluded but, comfortable in her victim role, chooses not to sue, can I sue on her behalf, or my own? I know the specific answers depends on Alberta law, but the questions are interesting in their own right.
Should a man as bad as my grandfather have the right to dispose of his goods as he chooses? Personally, I kind of think he does, but I can also see the flip side.
Indeed I am. Why would I want someone I’ve never met and has no idea of who I was or what I wanted determine who gets my hard-earned estate?
Having a judge decide is just another, particularly vile, form of interference in a free (and dead) person’s life.
My God. Wait til you earn your first nickel, son.
I’ve earned a couple, Pop. Moreover, I stand to inherit a rather tidy sum myself one day in the (hopefully) distant future.
There’s been state intereference in estates for years - this is nothing new. I’m with RNATB, and I have earned more than a few nickels in my time here. Inherited privilege and inherited wealth are problematic in a democratic society. However, they are hard to avoid without creating worse problems. But that doesn’t mean we have to allow a system that a dead person gets to decide without restriction. Wills won’t be enforced if they violate certain societal norms - I don’t think, for example (and my property law class is a long time ago, and I never took Wills & Trusts other than as a bar review course), one can make a bequest dependent on a person not marrying a Jew.
This Canadian example seems a pretty extreme example, but the general principle that wills can be voided is a good one. If you want control over your property, give it away when alive. Once you’re dead, you have no property, and I am opposed to giving your estate the same powers that the law gives to you.
Saying the judge had no idea who the testator was ignores the fact the judge held hearings, listened to sworn testimony of the witnesses, and took items into evidence. He listened to both parties, and applied the facts to the law.
You make it sound like he flipped a coin or ignored evidence and was persuaded by feminine wiles. That’s simply not true.
I’ve earned millions of nickels, does that mean my opinion matters now?
I know people who know people. If you catch my drift… 
How many wills are written by dead people? When has a dead person ever decided anything? In my experience, people are alive when they write wills.
It would be better, of course, to give away the stuff when you are alive. This becomes problematic when you don’t know when you are going to die.
Which is why we respect live people’s actions to a greater extent than we do their determinations of what will happen in the future. The concept that you do not have exclusive domain over your property for perpetuityis hardly unheard of in property law.
If my son chooses to marry a Jewish girl during my life, I could choose not to attend, not to give a gift, not to pay for any of the wedding, not to settle property on him. I can choose to change my will and write him out of it. What I cannot do is write a will (and have it enforceable) that says if at any stage my son marries a Jewish girl, he inherits nothing, and cancels any periodic payments that might be due from my estate.
The law lets us be dickheads, but won’t necessarily assist in us being dickheads after our death. That’s why, as I mentioned, this Canadian situation is apparently extreme, but the principle that your intentions carry less weight after your death is a pretty well established on in law.
Clearly, if these services were in any significant way elicited by the promise, or even the suggested expectation, of a significant inheritance, the deceased is guilty of obtaining them under false pretenses (i.e. fraud). How else can the fraudster be meaningfully rebuked at this point (and others deterred from similar fraud) other than by setting aside the will?
It was his daughter, not some home practicioner, so I’m not all too worried whether or not the testator had promised her an inheritance. There is no need, for me, to show the testator was guilty of “false pretenses” before giving the daughter her fair, and needed, share.
Required in Florida. Must be because we have so many old people.
I can hardly bear the excitement.
In Ireland, even if you give your stuff away just before dying, the Court can reverse the transactionsa and take it back, if it was clear that you were trying to avoid your spouse’s legal right share.
That’s Equity that is right there.
Whole heap of case-law on that in Ireland - estoppel and the like.
It is required as a law school course? Who requires it? I didn’t know state bars had any authority over law schools, though I could be totally wrong. I spent three days learning it through BarBri, and have attempted to clean all of that crap out of my brain since.
The Florida Bar’s accreditation rules prescribe that certain courses be requirements. Don’t know how other states do it.
Mostly it’s the stuff every school does anyway: torts, contracts, civil procedure and so on. Wills, Estates & Trusts was just tacked on last year.
I don’t mind that much because it’s one of those things friends and family will forever be asking me about once I graduate anyway.
I think one of the reasons that courts are given the power to adjust wills is to prevent testators from arranging their lives so that after they are gone one or more of their children are destitute and therefore a burden on the community. You don’t get to decide that taxpayers can support four of your children so that you can give a bigger wad to another child.
Why don’t they just do that when the parent is alive? The child is no less a burden on the community then.