Will & trust contests · City of Los Angeles
Will and trust contests in Los Angeles
Angels Flight on Bunker Hill. Photo: Another Believer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A will that doesn’t sound like Dad, a trust amended in the hospital, a sibling who won’t show the numbers: John J. Donahue fights these cases for Los Angeles families, in the courthouse where he works most days.
Close to the courthouse
John’s office is at 12121 Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The probate departments where these cases are heard are downtown at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. He knows how those departments and their calendars work, which matters most when a deadline is close.
The cases Los Angeles families bring
The house left to the one who stayed. Read a story like this →
The house sold before anyone was told. Read a story like this →
The accounts emptied by a helper with a power of attorney. Read a story like this →
The brother who moved into Mom’s house and won’t discuss it. Read a story like this →
What a contest asks the court to decide
Every contest comes down to a few questions. Did your parent understand what they were signing? Did someone steer them, through dependence, isolation or pressure? Was the document signed the way the law requires, by the person it claims? And when a trustee or executor is already in charge: are they doing the job honestly, and can they account for every dollar?
In court papers those questions go by many names: undue influence, lack of capacity, fraud, forgery, breach of fiduciary duty, elder financial abuse. The names matter less than the dates, the records and the people who were in the room.
From the calls John gets
The Silver Lake bungalow
Mom’s will left her Silver Lake bungalow to all three children equally, the way she had said for twenty years. A new will, signed three weeks before she died, left it to the son who had moved back in. Nobody else knew it existed until it was filed.
What John looks at: Who arranged the new will, whether the lawyer met Mom alone, her medical notes from those three weeks, and whether the old will can be found. If the new will falls, the old one usually takes its place.
Illustration. Details changed; not a real client. More on will contests →
When the clock starts
If a will has been filed for probate, the notice will show a hearing date, and objecting at or before that hearing is often the strongest position. If a trustee’s notice has arrived, the 120 days to contest the trust are already running.
Standing: who can bring a contest
Not everyone who is unhappy with a will can contest it. California generally requires that you would be better off if the document were set aside, either because an earlier will or trust left you more, or because you would inherit under California’s rules if there were no will at all. A grandchild whose parent is still living, for example, usually wouldn’t inherit under those rules.
Standing is the first thing John checks, because it decides whether anything else matters. When one family member doesn’t have standing, sometimes another relative does, and the case can still be brought by the right person.
In families’ own words
What Los Angeles families ask
Can I contest a will if I wasn’t in it at all?
Only if you would inherit under an earlier will, or under California’s rules if the will fell. That is called standing, and it is the first thing John checks.
My parent had dementia. Doesn’t that settle it?
Not by itself. People with dementia have clear days. The question is the day of signing, which is why the records from that week matter so much.
The other side hired a big firm.
That is common, and it isn’t a reason to stay home. Good facts move cases more than letterhead does.
How long does a contest take?
Some settle within months at mediation. Cases that go to trial can take a year or more.
What will it cost us?
For qualifying cases, John works on contingency. How contingency works →
Stories from families like yours
Cut out at the end
“They always said it would be split three ways.”
Mom and Dad always said everything would be split evenly. The trust that surfaced after the funeral says otherwise.
The late change
The diagnosis and the signature, the same month.
Dad’s dementia was in his medical chart. So was the new trust amendment.
The house in Mom’s name
“Mom kept it simple. Now nobody can sell the house.”
No trust, no fight, just a house in Mom’s name. And nothing moves without the court.
Elsewhere John works
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