Florida Estate Litigation

Estate litigation exists when a person dies and a lawsuit needs to be filed on behalf of the decedent or the decedent’s heirs. It may or may not involve contesting a Last Will and Testament or a Revocable Trust. Instead, estate litigation may include opening an estate to file a wrongful death lawsuit against a nursing home, airline, automobile driver, railway or any other person or entity responsible for the death of an individual. While estate litigation can also include probate litigation, Last Will and Testament contests and trust litigation, in certain situations there are no heirs, family members or beneficiaries who are at odds over what the decedent did with his or her Last Will and Testament or trust; instead, for example, the estate litigation may be a lawsuit against a life insurance company that is refusing to honor the terms of a $1,000,000 life insurance policy because the insured committed suicide.

Estate litigation has become so popular that a model marrying an elderly billionaire became so famous after the death of her husband that she made a fortune with her own reality television show. While multi-billion dollar estate litigation cases are one-in-a-million, in real life estate litigation cases may be more like one-in-a-hundred. Throughout the State of Florida, brothers and sisters, relatives and employees, step-parents and biological heirs fight over the validity of Last Wills and Testaments, undue influence, lack of mental capacity and the transfer of real estate and other assets shortly before death. Estate litigation is a legal dispute usually initiated by someone who feels they did not receive what he or she was entitled to receive from the Estate. Estate litigation usually involves a great deal of animosity between the disputing parties. The professionals at Adrian Philip Thomas, P.A. understand the volatile nature of the dispute and will attempt to diffuse the situation through alternative dispute resolution techniques but if the dishonest person does not correct what he or she has done, then we will file a comprehensive lawsuit demanding that they face a court and explain their actions.