DID DAD HAVE DEMENTIA WHEN HE SIGNED THE WILL?

Are you involved in a Florida probate?

Has your dad passed away and you are getting legal documents in a Florida estate?

Some beneficiaries of Florida estates don’t receive the inheritance they expected. Are you getting less from dad under the Florida will than you thought? Some beneficiaries of a Florida probate or a Florida will wonder if dad had the right “capacity” when he signed the will. Was dad competent when he cut you out of the will?

As we age, our mind sometimes cannot keep up with our body. On the outside, we look good for an aging Florida citizen. But some Florida citizens are stricken by dementia. If left un-checked, un-monitored and perhaps un-medicated, the dementia can progress to the point that one doesn’t completely understand what one is doing.

Many heirs or family members or beneficiaries of Florida estates or Florida probates wonder if dad had dementia when he signed a will. Or, put another way, did dad’s dementia progress to the point where he didn’t understand what exactly he was doing when he cut you out of the will or disinherited you from his Florida estate?

Probate lawyers from Jupiter, Florida to Delray Beach, Florida to Boca Raton, Florida will tell you that the only way to answer that may be to conduct dementia discovery.

What is dementia discovery? Dementia discovery is the legal process of asking questions and gathering information to determine the mental health of your father and the circumstances surrounding his signing of the will. You have to do it in a legal proceeding, which means the Florida probate, the process of estate administration, or by filing a lawsuit, such as a lawsuit for tortuous interference with an inheritance. From there, you can issue interrogatories, and requests for production of documents. Your probate litigator can conduct depositions of potential witnesses. And perhaps most of all, your Florida probate lawyer can issue subpoenas to your dad’s doctors and his estate lawyer. What do the files say about dad’s dementia? What don’t the files say about dad’s dementia. From this data, you try to reconstruct dad’s mental health and the effect the dementia had on his ability to sign a will.

Tough questions to ask…..sometimes tough answers are what you get. But if you don’t get involved in the estate administration, in the Florida probate, or if you don’t file an inheritance lawsuit, you may never know.