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In the common law tradition, testamentary capacity is the legal term of art used to describe a person's legal and mental ability to make a valid will.
Adults are presumed capable
Certain people, such as minors, are conclusively deemed incapable of making a will by the common law; however, minors who serve in the military are conceded the right to make a will by statute in many jurisdictions.
Adults are presumed to have the ability to make a will. Litigation about testamentary capacity typically revolves around charges that the testator, by virtue of senility, dementia, insanity, or some similar unsoundness of mind, lacked the mental capacity to make a will. In essence, the doctrine requires those who would challenge a validly executed will to demonstrate that the testator did not know what he was doing when he executed the will.
The testator must have known what he was doing
The test is quite lenient. Some courts have held that a person who lacked the capacity to make a contract can nevertheless make a valid will. While the wording of statutes or judicial rulings will vary from one jurisdiction to another, the test generally requires that the testator was aware of:
- the extent and value of his property;
- those who are the natural objects of his bounty; and
- their deserts, with respect to their treatment of and conduct toward him.
In other words, the testator had to know what he owned, who his family members were, and how they treated him in life. The legal test also implies who the typical litigant in a will contest will be: disgruntled heirs who believe they should have received a larger share of the estate than what they received under the will. Those who would bring such a challenge to a validly executed will bear the burden of proof that the testator lacked this ability.
Insane delusions
Litigants who challenge a will sometimes allege that the testator laboured under an "insane delusion" or monomania that rendered them incapable of judging rationally the deserts of their presumed heirs; one court has defined "insane delusions" as "those that are so contrary to human nature that it would lead to the inference that some mental defect existed."
This test is also lenient. In the 1854 case of Addington v. Wilson, the Supreme Court of Indiana held that a testator who disinherited his daughters because he believed them to be witches was not for that reason alone so insane as to deem them incapable of making a valid will. The court justified its decision by pointing to distinguished jurists and religious figures who affirmed the possibility of witchcraft; if these people's beliefs did not render them insane, neither did the testator's.
Proof of testamentary capacity
Those who would challenge a will for lack of testamentary capacity must typically show that the decedent suffered from some sort of mental unsoundness that left them unable to remember family members or caused them to hold insane delusions about them. Dead man's statutes sometimes restrict evidence which can be admitted concerning transactions with the decedent.
Lawyers for people whose testamentary capacity might be called into question often arrange for a will execution to be video taped. On video, they will ask the testator about his property and about his family, and go over the contents of the testator's will, to create a record that the testator met the qualifications.
References
- Addington v. Wilson, 5 Blackf. (Ind.) 137, 61 Am.Dec. 81 (Sup. Ct. Ind. 1854)
- Allman v. Malsbury, 224 Ind. 177, 65 N.E.2d 106 (Sup. Ct. Ind. 1946)
- Hays v. Harmon, 809 N.E.2d 460 (Ind. Ct. App., 2004)
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