Some judges here in the UK have completely ignored someone’s express wish that her estranged daughter not receive a penny, and it should all go to charity. Judges have overruled it based on the suggestion that the deceased seemed to have no interaction with those charities in her lifetime.
So what, right? If someone wants to disinherit their adult children they should be perfectly free to imo. If they state in the will it should all be used to buy antiques which are then to be burned, it’s their right and shouuld be fulfilled, it’s none of the court’s business what the deceased’s rationale is.
Groucho Marx left a lot of money to his long time companion Erin Fleming. One of his kids didn’t like that so he sued and won. Quite a few people testified against charges that she held some sort of magic sway over him and abused him.
Stephen Girard died in 1831 and willed a pot of money to start a boarding school for poor white male orphans. I don’t know the details but the will was broken in 1954 and blacks were admitted. Girls came in 1984. Apparently the court ruled that a city agency, which was the governing body, could not segregate. See Girard College - Wikipedia for more history. 1954 was the year I graduated from HS and I well remember the furore over the “inviolability of Girard’s will”. But I think it is a legal principle that a will cannot rule for all time. Anyway, the courts took the attitude that the will was against public policy.
After you’re dead, there’s only a certain extent to which the still-living will agree to take into account the wishes that you would have had, had you been still around to have them.
People should take that into account before agreeing to kick off.
I thought judges could always do this here in the US. People can put anything in a will but their wishes can’t necessarily be carried out. In the OP’s case the judges might believe the decedent was acting solely out of spite, and maybe saw that as a sign of diminished capacity. Or maybe they had the sense to realize we shouldn’t give a rat’s ass about what dead people want. You can’t take it with you and it should be up for grabs if you don’t give it away before you die.
Another example; the Barnes Foundation. Albert Barnes made a fortune with a drug to treat gonorrhea. He assembled a big collection of Impressionist and Modern art (the Wikipedia article values it at about $25 bilion). He set up a museum outside of Philadelphia but the number of visitors was extremely limited. A few years ago, the trustees were able to break the conditions set up in the will, and move the museum to a more accessible location in Philadelphia.
I’m actually surprised that this decision has drawn comment in Britain because I thought the law there already provided for such claims.
In New Zealand such claims have long been allowed in our law. Family Protection Act 1955. Law Reform (Testamentary Promises) Act 1949. Relationship Property Act 1976 (matrimonial/community property).
Additionally and stemming from centuries of British law, wills may be challenged for testamentary capacity (the testator was nuts) or invalid execution. Indeed I have witnessed a few wills over the years where I later learned the testator had Alzheimer’s or mild dementia. Which didn’t mean they weren’t lucid at that moment and more importantly, the wills treated the family equally so it was non-contentious.
There have been U.S. cases where wills set up to entirely disinherit children/relatives have been overridden in the courts for one reason or another.
Supposedly if you want to stick it to the rotten son or spouse you’re supposed to at least leave them a token amount to demonstrate you haven’t overlooked them entirely. :dubious:
That was my impression as well. Courts have always had the power to override a will, in certain exceptional cases. That fact isn’t news, by any stretch of the imagination.
What may be a development here is the onus the court is putting on the testator to explain why the testator is disinheriting.
I’m also a bit surprised at a middle-aged child being able to rely on the dependant’s relief act cited in the news article. I had thought those types of statutes were normally intended for minor children, or adult disabled children.
However, it would depend on the wording used by Parliament in the Act.
You are right that most of the exceptions that I have seen either through statute or case law relate to spouses, minor children (typically where the parent died suddenly without amending the will, when the child was small) and disabled major children.
