Court challenge over elderly man's will may be a sign of things to come

There is a very sad, upsetting case being heard in the Ontario court. It is about the will of Christos Vloyiannitis, who died in 2013 at the age of 78. Before Mr. Vloyiannitis died, he changed his will to make his caregivers, a married couple named Terry and Pam Cross, his major beneficiaries. He also made them his powers of attorney for both personal care and financial matters.

The day before Mr. Vloyiannitis died, he was admitted to hospital in very bad shape, with issues including malnutrition and untreated sores.

Mr. Vloyiannitis's sister is contesting the will. She alleges that the caregivers took advantage of an old, sick man who was grieving the death of his wife and was dependent on pain meds including morphine. She says they isolated him from family and were spending about $13,000 a month of his money.

Click here to read a story from the National Post that gives more details about the case.

The angle taken in the story is that this type of will challenge is going to become more common in the near future as our population ages. I agree. Not everyone has family members who are willing and able to provide the care that is needed. More and more of us will be dependent on paid caregivers. This means that more of us will be vulnerable to the dishonest ones among them.

Will challenges are based on the idea that the testator was unduly influenced by a greedy or unscrupulous person or did not have the mental capacity to understand what was happening. These cases are already pretty common. In fact, I have one in front of the Newfoundland courts right now. Here's how it works: when most wills are admitted to the probate court, they go through on a simplified, informal process. If there is a reason to suspect that there is something wrong with the will (known as "suspicious circumstances), a family member or other person can request that the court take a closer look. If the court agrees that there are suspicious circumstances, it would then go through a process whereby the circumstances of the will would be examined in detail.

This type of litigation is lengthy (think years, not months), expensive and really unpleasant. There are accusations flying around and every possible bit of dirt is brought up. This is because the court digs deep to see what happened leading up to the signing of the will.

All of us who have seniors in our lives should do our best to keep an eye on them. Sometimes older people feel very lonely and are easily convinced by opportunistic people that nobody in their family cares about them. Isolation is dangerous.