Questions to Ask a Psychiatrist to Contest a Will
- What matters was the person's mental state at the moment of signing.signing a contract image by William Berry from Fotolia.com
The death of a loved one, a sad and confusing time, grows more confusing when the need arises to contest the will. To contest a will, you must prove that the deceased had diminished testamentary capacity -- the inability to comprehend concepts such as what making a will means or who his family members are. Questioning a psychiatrist is an important step in proving what a person's testamentary capacity was at the time he signed the will. - While it's not a normal part of aging, dementia is common in the elderly, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Dementia can involve loss of memory, cognitive ability and reasoning skills. A person with symptoms of dementia at the time of signing a will lacks testamentary capacity. According to the "International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry," in instances of contesting a will, dementia is part of the case 40 percent of the time.
- If a psychiatrist treated the deceased for a psychiatric or neurological disorder, ask if symptoms of the disorder that affect decision-making were present when the will was signed and witnessed. A person may have delusions; however, if he was delusion-free on the day the will was signed, he still had testamentary capacity .
- Ask if the patient abused alcohol or drugs or if he took any medications that could have affected decision-making. Again, the person would have had to use those medications at the time the will was signed.
- Ask the psychiatrist if the deceased was under undue influence. Undue Influence means that a friend, family member or care giver forced, pressured or threatened the deceased to change the will. Undue influence has to be extreme coercion by a person who was with the deceased very often and was probably present during doctor's exams, therapy sessions and the will-signing.
