wills death guardianship custody
Are wills that easily contested?
<p>I've seen multiple situations in TV shows, fictional and nonfictional, where wills or other expressions of post-mortem wishes have been contested for reasons that seemed trivial.</p>
<p>One was a man who named his friends, a successful married couple, who loved and were loved by this child, and who he believed would be better guardians than his parents (the child's grandparents) to be his daughter's guardians, but once he died there was a legal battle over custody as this man's parent, the child's grandparents, thought they could provide a slightly &quot;better&quot; life due to being more wealthy.</p>
<p>Is this enough of an argument? Is a person's dying will not the final say unless extenuating circumstances are proven?</p>

<p>A child is not property, therefore a (deceased) parent cannot transfer ownership. In case the sole custodial parent dies, the court will appoint a guardian for a minor child, and will take into consideration the wishes of the deceased parent, however their primary duty is to protect the interest of the child. It follows from this that objections to nomination of Smith as guardian are more easily sustained, since the requirements for being a guardian (e.g. <a href="https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=11.130&amp;full=true" rel="nofollow noreferrer">in Washington</a>) are stricter than the requirements for receiving $100,000. RCW 11.130.090 excludes any guardian who has been &quot;convicted of a crime involving dishonesty, neglect, or use of physical force or other crime relevant to the functions the individual would assume as guardian&quot;, but such a person is not barred from inheriting property.</p>
<p>There are limited formal grounds for contesting a will: testator mentally incompetence, formal failure of the document, (the laws surrounding signatures and witnesses), no clear indication that the document is intended to be a will, forgery or fraud, undue influence (such as a gun to the head), or mistake (for example, mistakenly believing that their child was dead therefore leaving it all to a neighbor). So it is possible, but not so easy, to contest a will.</p>
<p>Organ donation takes place under separate laws: you can't wait for the probate process to get finished in three months before donating organs.</p>
