You fight, you lose: adding no contest clauses to wills

Nobody wants their loved ones and/or beneficiaries to fight over their estate (well, almost nobody. I did once have a client who was a very angry man and wanted to deliberately set up a situation in which his kids would have to fight it out. Cooler heads eventually prevailed).

In this post, Laura West briefly discusses the practice of putting a clause into a will that tells a beneficiary that if he or she contests the will, the beneficiary will not get anything. I agree with Ms. West's conclusion that these clauses "may" be effective. And they may not. It's an area of law that isn't as simple as people would like it to be.

I've blogged about these clauses before. Click here to read my earlier post.