What You Need To Know About Mental Instability Regarding Wills
Unless you are a law school student studying to be a probate attorney or an estate planner helping people plan their wills or a lawyer who writes wills, what you need to know about mental instability regarding wills is actually not much at all.
What Is A Sound Mind?
Thanks to legal shows on television and popular novels and movies, we all know how a will begins: "I, Rich Anne Gottbucks, being of sound mind …." If you're wondering about mental instability regarding wills, then you are wondering what it means legally to be of "sound mind."
Probate laws, which govern the law of wills and trusts and estates, vary from state to state and country to country. Generally speaking, however, there are a few elements of a person's mental fitness that most jurisdictions consider to be important when assessing mental instability regarding wills.
The language describing what constitutes mental instability regarding wills, or being of an unsound mind, is a bit stilted because it deals with ancient legal principles.
Testators Must Know The Nature And Extent Of Their Property
Judges try to determine whether the person who left the will -- called the "testator" - knew the nature and extent of their property at the time they made their will. This factor deals with whether the person was "with it" enough to know what property they had. Someone who thinks they own nothing might treat their property differently than someone who thinks they have great wealth. A testator should have a basic knowledge of what property they will be passing on in their will and the extent of the property.
Testators Must Know The "Natural Objects" Of Their Bounty
By "natural objects," this legal principle means blood relatives, and by "bounty," it means wealth. In most jurisdictions, if a person dies without making a will, their property gets divided in some form or another among their blood relatives. The usual order of succession in many places is spouse, child, grandchild, parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, or cousin. Thus, knowing the natural objects of one's bounty means that a person who is making a will is supposed to know who his blood relatives are that would inherit his wealth
Testators Must Know The Dispositions Being Made
A person making a will must understand how the property in the will is being allocated among her heirs, or she might be vulnerable to a claim of mental instability regarding her will.
Testators Must Demonstrate A Rational Order To The Disposition
The will has to make sense, or how can a person understand the dispositions that are made? If a Testator who has two children, for example, gives a single blade of grass to one child and an acre of land, except for that blade of grass, to the other child, it might seem that there is some mental instability involved regarding the will.
