Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Maine
changing of a will
unknone to the rest of the rest of family,my dead beat brother in law,who has never worked and been in and out of rehabe most of life,tookmy mother in law to make a will,she has good and bad days of rembering as she is 81 and has dementia when we found the will six mounty later motherrembers going to the lawers,but did not know she was making a new will,making my brother in law helt care agent,personal representative ,you get the picture. what can or shouldbe done.thank you--name removed--
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: changing of a will
If your mother is competent, then she can while lucid revoke her will and the rest of the documents. If she is not then you are stuck with what she has written, although you might be able to go to court and seek to get a guardian appointed for her with seek the revocation of the Will and other documents. That will be an expensive process.
One problem you will have is one party challenging the other over undue influence and her competence.
Good luck. If you have more questions, please feel free to contact me.
Re: changing of a will
The issue is her current ability to legally change anything. If she is more lucid in the morning, etc. then she needs to revoke those documents asap if that is what she really wants to do. If she no longer has legal capacity then she is stuck with the existing documents.
Although physically destroying a Will, POA, etc will revoke it, if there are copies floating around, it is not always clear after someone passes away what they really intended, so the best course is for her to return to that lawyer, have him/her determine that she is legally competent (perhaps videotape her)and not only revoke, but enter into new POAs, Will, etc since she probably wants and needs to. It would be best to have diferent people named as PR in the Will and as POA for her so that the whole family is involved and supports this change. This may help to prevent the situation later becoming a fight just between 2 individuals, each of whom claims the other was taking advantage of her.
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