Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Pennsylvania

I wanted to contest my grandmother's will but my year was up in 2014.

are ther any legal reasons why i could get that tiime extended and still contest the will? do i still have time to file a tort action (tortious interference with inheritance)

how much would that cost about? thanks so much


Asked on 8/02/15, 7:48 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

Why do you want to contest your GRANDMOTHER's will? She is not obligated to leave you anything. And even if her will is tossed out, why would you inherit anything? Your grandmother's estate would pass to her spouse, if any, and her children. Is your parent who was the child of your grandmother still alive? If so, you get nothing.

Second, what basis do you have for a will caveat? When did your grandmother make her will? Was she mentally competent at that time? Was she under the influence of some other person who benefitted to the exclusion of anyone else?

There is no such thing as tortious interference with an inheritance that I am aware of. There is no right to an inheritance.

Assuming you have some kind of action sounding in tort, it is a 2 year statute of limitations. The two years begins to run when the bad act occurred which caused the harm (not when your grandmother died) or when the tort/your harm could reasonably have been discovered. You do not indicate when the allegedly tortious act occurred or when you first learned of it so neither I nor any other attorney can possibly tell you if you still have time.

As for filing a caveat, you do not indicate when your grandmother died. You had to file it with the register of wills. You then have one year from the date of the decree to appeal. From your post, it sounds like the will was accepted by the register of wills and you did nothing and the one year expired.

Posting on a public message board is not a substitute for getting an evaluation of your case. Can you get an extension? It depends. Why did you not act sooner? Obviously, your grandmother died in 2013. Where have you been since then? What prevented you from acting sooner? And there are the other considerations I raised at the beginning. Would a caveat even be justified here and what proof do you have? If the answers are that a caveat would not be cost effective or if you have no grounds, then the timeliness issue is a moot point.

You need to think about these issues and then get a copy of the estate file and talk to a probate litigation attorney and see (a) if a caveat would have been worthwhile; (b) if so, what it would cost; (c) what can be done at this juncture; and (d) whether any other causes of action might exist against others to the extent they caused you harm. There is third-party beneifciary law where if two people agree to benefit a third-party (say a lawyer agrees to do a will for a person and screws up) then the beneficiary can sue. So there could be something there in theory.

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Answered on 8/02/15, 11:13 pm


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