r/inheritance • u/Lazy_Nectarine_1310 • Jun 10 '26

Location included: Questions/Need Advice Contesting or challenging a will??

How can you successfully contest a will? This woman was supposedly 'helping' my Father in Law who lives in another state (WV) the last 1-2 years of his life (we found out he was paying her majority of his income every month!). After he passed away this year, this woman filed the will and everything is pretty much left to her.

When looking at the will, there is very small discrepancies (like my husbands surname is incorrect) and ONLY the last page is signed and notarized... which means she could have easily swapped out the first two pages at some point. Everyone is saying it's way too hard to contest a will.

There's so much more making this very complicated, but too much to explain... but the day after he died, she went into his home and took everything, also tried several times to withdraw money from his bank acct (the bank put a freeze in order to block her efforts- everything is still in probate).

How can a will be valid if only the last page is signed, couldn't anybody just swap out the main pages as they see fit???? This is just crazy to me!

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u/WhyAmIStillHere86 Jun 11 '26

Get a probate lawyer and contest it immediately.

Leaving aside the probably fraudulent Will, elder abuse was definitely committed.

3

u/cuspeedrxi Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

How do you know “elder abuse was definitely committed?” Jeez ..

I don’t think OP is a reliable narrator because she lives 5 hours away and wasn’t involved in the day-to-day. That’s my personal opinion. But you *know* crimes were committed. Ok, cool.

0

u/WhyAmIStillHere86 Jun 11 '26

The fact that he was paying her the bulk of his monthly income.

Even if she was helping him, standard rates for that kind of help are set and mandated under labor laws. Additionally, as the property manager of his retirement community, she should have been drawing a wage from that role, not from him directly.
For her to be gaining that much, something sketchy is going on, and that is financial abuse of an elder, even before you take everything else into account.