By recent unpublished order in the matter of McMurtrie, v. McMurtrie, the Supreme Court of Virginia reversed a trial court’s ruling that a no contest clause (in terrorem clause) in a trust did not apply to a trust settlor (trust creator).
While unpublished, the order nevertheless provides an instructive analysis of the legal framework for an increasingly common estate dispute scenario: whether a no contest clause in a trust or will has been violated by the actions of a beneficiary. Additionally, this unpublished order also applied certain principles from the Supreme Court’s recent Hunter v. Hunter decision. Notably, Hunter v. Hunter is the case that my colleague Will Sleeth and I litigated successfully up to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and about which my colleague Will Sleeth has written several previous posts (post 5, post 4, post 3, post 2, post 1).
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This post is part 5 in our 7-part series on the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in 
This post is part 4 in our 7-part series on the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in 
By recent 
For years, we’ve written on this blog about the dangers that increasingly-broadly-worded no contest clauses pose. The concern lies, in short, in the fact that unscrupulous fiduciaries could seek to hide behind a no contest clause in order to deter a will or trust beneficiary from holding the fiduciary accountable for misconduct. Conventionally, no contest clauses applied to challenges to the underlying validity of a will or trust itself. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen an explosion in no contest clauses that purport to be triggered by challenges to conduct by a fiduciary, or contests to instruments (such as beneficiary designations or right of survivorship designations) that are completely separate and apart from the instrument that contains the no contest clause. 
By recent unpublished 
As loyal readers of this blog know, our team has previously posted analyses of the fictional estates of the Star Wars universe (
In 
The Virginia Supreme Court recently handed down one of the most significant trust and estate litigation opinions in years. In the unanimous ruling in 
As we make our way into a new year, it’s a good time to ask what trends we’re likely to see in 2020 in the world of estate litigation. Three main trends stand out in my mind: litigation over increasingly broad no contest clauses, an increase in contested guardianship and conservatorship litigation, and the advent of litigation over electronic wills.
