Estate Planning as a Career

There is value in the story of an older client who had seen a very interesting clause employed in a will. There was a great deal of money at stake and the many family members had little reason to love each other, because they had never met and never knew of each other’s existence. It was expected that the will would be heavily contested on several different fronts in every conceivable way. The testator realized that a truly lengthy contest would result with the bulk of his estate in the hands of people he really didn’t care for in the least: Lawyers.

In fact, that is not an unworthy consideration in a heavily contested will or long fought divorce; lawyers may end up with the bulk of the estate or marital property. The move to arbitration is one of the ways that the legal profession is trying to prevent these unseemly outcomes. The clause that this client had seen employed in his grandfather’s will was like the following, “Anyone named in and contesting this will receives the maximum bequest of $1, regardless of the outcome.” This clause meant that regardless of whether the litigant had proven undue influence or diminished capacity or fraud, they would still only receive $1 as a bequest specifically because of having brought and proven their claim. Since none of the family knew or trusted one another a great deal, this effectively eliminated potential contests.

Often testators anticipate their will to be contested and they wish to insert what is called a no-contest clause in their will. The no contest clause is exactly what this elderly client had described, because it was designed to terrorize a would-be contestor of the will into thinking twice about facing the threat of getting just a dollar rather than the sum they had been left. Such clauses are also sometimes called terrorem clauses, because they are designed to scare the beneficiari (more…)