I just picked up this teeny abstract from the New York Law Journal, because it hints, hints hints at some nasty after-death family battles, doesn’t it?
Here’s what I’m reading in it: an old woman has been ill and subsequently dies. And uh-oh! her will is read and uh-oh! some family members (we won’t give names because I can’t get the whole article, although I guess I could look the case up in the Surrogate Court files) are not at all happy with the way Winifred left her estate.
So they’ve challenged the will, saying that she was old and sick and didn’t know what she was doing.
However, the Surrogate Court judge said, hang on a minute. Just because she was old and sick doesn’t automatically mean she didn’t have the mental capacity to know how she wanted to write her will and leave her stuff.
Surrogate’s Court, New York County
Probate Proceeding, Estate of Winifred Shearer, Deceased, 2012-952
Trusts and Estates
Advanced Age, or Illness Does Not Raise Presumption Against Testamentary Capacity