Tag Archives: Pre-death Will Contests

There are a handful of states that allow a person to probate a will (and challengers to contest the validity of a will) before the testator (the person enacting the will) dies. In recent years, there has been a trend to expand the practice to more states. I had an interesting discussion about this issue at the recent Heckerling conference, and I wrote this blog post to discuss why I think the practice is a bad idea. First, some background: pre-death probate (also known as antemortem probate) is only permitted in a handful of states (including Ohio, Arkansas, North Dakota, and …