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Hi, this is Stewart Albertson with Albertson & Davidson. In this video, I want to talk about how we can support the claim, and meet our burden of proof, to show that undue influence took place.

Some of the markers that we look for are the actions by the person that we believe exerted or exercised undue influence over a decedent.  We want to look at this person’s place of business in the decedent’s life when the decedent was still living.  Did this person have control over the decedent’s access to food?  Did they have control over access to medications?  Did they have control over access to going to medical appointments to see physicians?  Did they have control over the financial information of the decedent?

We see these markers and we look at this person and we say, “did they take their place within the decedent’s life, where the decedent relies on them for many things:  their medications, transportation, food?  Did they take that and did they exercise undue pressure over the decedent to get the decedent to create a trust or a will that benefits them, at the expense of other people?”

The more we see these markers, the more that we see the undue pressure, such as a wrongdoer calling up a lawyer that the decedent has never met to make an appointment to create a new trust or a new amendment or a new will or a codicil to that will, to that person driving the decedent to the lawyer, to meeting in the lawyer’s office with the lawyer and the decedent to create the trust, to have multiple emails and texts with the drafting attorney to make sure that the trust or will is drafted according to the decedent’s wishes, those are all things that we see time and time again in these undue influence cases.

One thing that really helps us, in addition to everything I’ve just pointed out is the medical records. Do the medical records show that the decedent suffered from some type of mental incapacity, such as dementia or Alzheimer’s?  It doesn’t have to be dementia or Alzheimer’s, but that’s one we commonly see.  If the decedent is suffering from any mental incapacity issues, and you have all of those other things we’ve talked about, those elements we’ve looked at, where this person is in a position of power, that generally leads us to believe that that person exercised undue influence over this individual. If they’re receiving a lion share of the estate plan, or they are receiving more than they would have, absent the undue influence.

Those are some of the things we look at to determine if we can show undue influence took place during the lifetime of decedent, often shortly before the decedent passed away.