What Do Florida Residents Need to Know Before They Revoke a Will or Trust?

When Florida estate attorneys help you draft a new estate plan or will they should be careful to make sure that you also revoke all prior wills and codicils. So what happens if the will that revokes oldwills is later deemed invalid? Are the revocations invalid as well? Check out this recent case out of Texas probate court to see how estate attorneys Florida handle these types of issues.

Revoking a Will

• Florida probate lawyers know that revoking a will in Florida can be tricky.
• There are a lot of rules.
• In fact there are multiple types of revocation.
• Do you know what partial revocation is?
• Partial revocation is when you want part of the will amended but do not want to eliminate the whole will.
• This can be done by a will amendment called a codicil, with the help of a Florida probate attorney.
• Florida will contest lawyers know that you cannot partially revoke a will by act, such as crossing out that portion.
• There is also total revocation.
• That is quite obviously when you want to get rid of the entire will.
• How do you do that?
• Florida estate attorney can help you draft new wills to replace the old with revocation language included.
• You may also be able to simply destroy the will but now what happens to your estate plan?
• You may be stuck with the rules of intestate succession.
• Check out this recent appeal from Texas dealing with an improperly revoked will.
• Florida probate litigation can arise when wills are not formulated with the right formalities.
• Read more to learn why.

Estate of Bedell

• This was a probate appeal from Texas, so what does this have to do with Florida estate litigation?
• This is a problem that could occur anywhere when probate attorneys are not paying attention.
• Here a man’s daughter filed his 2003 will for probate but his then wife wanted to probate a later will from 2005.
• Normally the 2005 will would trump and revoke all former wills, right?
• So why was the 2003 will the one to be probated?
• Because the 2005 will was not executed properly so it had no effect!
• That included the effect of revoking the last will!
• Florida estate attorneys can avoid these issues by paying attention to the formalities of Florida’s probate code.
• Do you know what they are?

Want to learn more?

Check out a free copy of the whole case by clicking here.

• Watch free Florida Trust, Probate & Guardianship videos, which include important topics of Florida estate, guardianship, attorneys fees, & trust law.
• There is no cost, no sign up, no one will ask you for your email address to see these dozens of free Florida