If you are planning to contest a decedent’s trust, there is a lot you will need to consider.
For one, you will need to verify you have legal standing to contest the trust. Standing means that you have a financial interest in the outcome of the matter. If winning your contest would mean that you’d receive a greater inheritance than the inheritance you’re receiving currently, you have standing. Most of the time, parties with standing in a trust contest include trust beneficiaries, beneficiaries under prior versions of the trust and the decedent’s heirs.
Second, you must ensure that your grounds for contesting the trust are valid. In California, simply being unhappy with your inheritance is not an acceptable reason for contesting a trust. Instead, you must demonstrate that the trust does not reflect the true intentions of the trust creator (known as the settlor, grantor or trustor). The most common grounds for contesting a trust include undue influence, fraud, and the settlor having lacked the necessary capacity to create a trust when they did.
Finally, you will need to think long and hard about whether the cost of contesting a trust would be worthwhile for you. You should take into account both monetary and non-monetary costs. For example, while you could have to spend a lot of money to litigate your trust contest, you also could have to dedicate considerable time and energy to it. In addition, there could be emotional costs involved.
Upon receiving a copy of the decedent’s trust from the successor trustee, it’s crucial you immediately consider your standing and grounds for contesting the trust, as well as potential costs. Your best course of action would be to consult with a knowledgeable lawyer for wills and trusts, who could review the trust and your concerns surrounding it, and accordingly provide guidance on how to proceed.
Most importantly, however, teaming up with a lawyer can help guarantee the statute of limitations for a trust contest in California does not elapse before you’ve had a chance to file your trust contest petition. Your lawyer will stay on top of important deadlines, leaving you with fewer things to stress over.
That said, if you fail to get in touch with a lawyer within the established time frame to contest a trust in California, there may not be anything a lawyer can do to help you.
Although the trust contest statute of limitations can seem like a trivial detail compared to other considerations when contesting a trust, ignoring it could completely derail your legal efforts, leaving you without any recourse. Thus, it’s crucial to take the time to thoroughly understand California’s trust contest statute of limitations before proceeding further.
In the following sections, we outline the five most important facts to know about the statute of limitations to contest a trust in California.
