To legally write an estate plan, someone has to have testamentary capacity. They are of sound mind, they understand the decisions they are making and there is nothing that could negatively impact their estate plan.
Generally speaking, most adults have testamentary capacity to write an estate plan at any given time. But there are certain things that can change this, especially as individuals grow older. One could be a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, a condition that can lead to many different mental health challenges in the elderly.
Why would that call an estate plan into question?
The issue is that a person with Alzheimer’s disease may not be thinking clearly enough to make these important legal decisions. This increases the odds of probate disputes.
For example, say that a person who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s writes a will and disinherits one of their children. They simply do not include that child in the will at all.
The other beneficiaries may argue that they did want to disinherit one of their children, perhaps being concerned about how that person would spend their inheritance or because of an existing estrangement between the two.
But the beneficiary who was left out of the will may argue that it is a simple case of being forgotten due to Alzheimer’s. They believe that their parent would have included them in the estate plan and would have left them an inheritance otherwise. They may argue that the elderly person no longer had testamentary capacity due to the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, so the estate plan that they wrote should not be legally binding.
A complex process
You can see how complicated this can make things when trying to determine the validity of a will. Those who are going through this process and addressing probate disputes must be aware of all the legal options they have.
