BERGEN COUNTY PROBATE

The children challenged the decedent’s will dated April 19, 2001 and a number of inter vivos gifts, due to undue influence by their stepmother and lack of testamentary capacity. The court set aside one gift but denied the remainder of the children’s request for relief. The decedent was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in September 2000, and died in December 2004; the court concluded that there was no competent evidence that the decedent lacked testamentary capacity during any time relevant to the formulation or execution of his estate plan and that he had not become "so enfeebled as to have rendered his free will susceptible to being overcome" by the stepmother’s influence until sometime after April 2001. So the court rejected the challenge to the will and to the decedent’s conveyance of real property on April 16, 2001. But the decedent’s change of beneficiary to the stepmother on three separate IRAs in May 2002 was set aside because the stepmother was unable to rebut the presumption of undue influence.     In Re Estate of Prochazka, New Jersey Ch. Div., May 9, 2007