fraud

Our Most Popular Estate Planning Blog Posts of 2018

Our Most Popular Estate Planning Blog Posts of 2018

The end of the year is always a great time to reflect on life and to commit yourself to improvement in the year to come. (And to create some awesome estate planning New Year’s resolutions!)

We recently wrote about the importance of using this time to review your estate plan. But estate planning is a big and often complicated topic. To help you think about estate planning and the issues you may face in the future, here are our posts from 2018 that readers found the most useful:

1. What is the Difference Between a Will and a Trust?

Wills and Trusts are two of the most common (and most well-known) estate planning documents. But what are the differences between them? What are their relative advantages and disadvantages? In our most popular post of the year, we explain the differences (and similarities) between a last will and testament and a living trust.

2. 4 Tips to Identify Undue Influence

In Oklahoma, undue influence consists of taking an unfair advantage of another's weakness of mind or body or the use of authority to procure an unfair advantage over someone. This post explains how undue influence can occur in estate planning and how you can identify and avoid it.

How to Recognize Fraud in Estate Planning

How to Recognize Fraud in Estate Planning

Suppose your mother has dementia. Her nurse convinces her that he is her only child and has her sign estate planning documents leaving all of her assets to him and expressly disinheriting you and any of her other children. Are those documents valid? Likely not, as your mother has been the victim of fraud.

What is fraud?

There are several ways fraud can be committed in the estate planning process, but the type of fraud we will discuss in this article is referred to as fraudulent inducement. Let's say your mother executed a Last Will and Testament. You could challenge that Will if your mother was fraudulently induced into leaving her property to a person she would not normally have left it (in the example above, the nurse).

4 Ways to Challenge an Estate Plan

4 Ways to Challenge an Estate Plan

Estate planning is meant to provide certainty and security to your loved ones. So how would you feel if, after your death, your estate plan were ignored? How would you feel if a probate court tossed it out and decided to do things differently? (Trick question: You're dead, so you can't feel at all.) Unfortunately, these are very real possibilities if your estate plan is successfully contested.

How Can My Estate Plan Be Challenged?

Understanding how your estate plan can be contested is the first step to making sure it won't be contested. That is why we are dedicating our next few blog posts to discussing the different ways an estate plan can be challenged in Oklahoma. Links to each new article in this series will be posted below as they are published: