Wills Trusts and Estates Flashcards

An Indiana testator executes a valid will, then writes 'VOID' across every page and signs it, intending revocation. The will is:

Answer: Revoked, because cancellation with intent to revoke is a valid physical act of revocation

A will may be revoked by a physical act such as cancellation performed on the will with contemporaneous intent to revoke.

After executing her will, an Indiana testator marries. She dies without updating the will and without providing for her new husband. The husband is entitled to:

Answer: An intestate share as an omitted (pretermitted) spouse, unless the will shows the omission was intentional or he was provided for outside the will

A spouse who marries the testator after the will's execution generally takes an intestate share unless the omission was intentional or compensated by nonprobate transfers.

An Indiana will devises '100 shares of Acme stock' that the testator sold before death. Under the doctrine of ademption by extinction, the beneficiary receives:

Answer: Nothing, because the specific gift adeems when the property is not in the estate

A specific devise fails (adeems) if the specifically identified property is not part of the estate at death.

In an Indiana will contest alleging undue influence, which fact pattern most strongly raises a presumption of undue influence?

Answer: The drafting attorney, who was in a confidential relationship with the testator, receives a large bequest under the will

A confidential relationship plus the fiduciary's active procurement of a benefit raises a presumption of undue influence shifting the burden to the beneficiary.

Under Indiana law, an interested witness (a beneficiary who also attests the will) causes what result?

Answer: The will remains valid, but the witness-beneficiary's gift is void unless two other disinterested witnesses attested or the witness would take by intestacy (limited to that share)

Indiana purges the gift to an attesting beneficiary unless the will is otherwise properly witnessed by disinterested witnesses, though the witness may keep up to an intestate share.

An Indiana decedent's will cannot be located at death, though it was last known to be in the testator's possession. The law presumes:

Answer: The testator destroyed the will with intent to revoke it

When a will last in the testator's possession cannot be found at death, a rebuttable presumption arises that the testator revoked it by destruction.

Under Indiana's slayer rule, a beneficiary who intentionally and unlawfully kills the testator:

Answer: Is treated as having predeceased the decedent and forfeits the inheritance

Indiana's constructive-trust/slayer statute bars an intentional killer from profiting, treating the killer as predeceasing the victim, and a civil finding by a preponderance can suffice.