What you may have planned for your trust, may be thwarted, if someone uses “excessive influence” to change your estate plan, trusts or estates, by law referred to an influence that is uhdue. Estate plans are the best way to help secure your future and that of your loved ones. Although there are many tools that can be utilized to make sure your estate plan meets your needs and has the best chance of achieving your goals, trusts can be a great way to help ensure the financial future you envision is actually achieved. When constructing a trust, the person transferring assets (called the “grantor”) will decide who is in charge of making the trust distributions (called the “trustee”) and who will receive the advantages and benefits from the trust (called the “beneficiary”). Where there is a large amount of assets involved, some people may try to pressure the grantor into naming particular people as trustees or beneficiaries. This sometimes rises to the level of undue influence.
The California probate code defines undue influence as “excessive persuasion that causes another person to act or refrain from acting by overcoming that person’s trust and results in inequity.” In essence, undue influence means that someone who holds authority or power over the grantor applies pressure to coerce the grantor into making a specific type of trust or naming specific people in the trust. This typically takes the form of the person exerting the undue influence being named as the beneficiary.
There are two main ways to prove undue influence in California. First, there is a rebuttable presumption if the person alleging the undue influence can prove that: 1) there was a confidential relationship between the grantor and the influencer; 2) the influencer participated in actually obtaining the trust; and 3) the influencer obtained an undue benefit from that trust. The California probate code also provides that the person asking for the trust to be invalidated can do so by proving that: 1) the victim was vulnerable; 2) the influencer had authority over the grantor, or at least appeared to; 3) the influencer took action and used particular tactics to influence the victim; and 4) an unfair outcome was the result of the undue influence. If undue influence can be proved in court, the trust can be completely undone.
Our attorneys are highly experienced in trusts and undue influence cases. Call us today to talk about your case.
