Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on undue influence and the perils of challenging probate.

Today, Massachusetts’ top court released an interesting decision in In the matter of the estate of John P. Urban.

To greatly simplify the fact pattern: Mr. Urban was a wealthy, and apparently quite social, man who lived in Massachusetts, spent some time in Florida, and did not have any heirs or descendants. When in Florida, he stayed at a guesthouse on the property of Michelle Finnegan’s parents, where she also lived.

Starting in 2013, Mr. Urban executed four wills prepared by Attorney Singleton. In each of the wills, he spread his estate among 16 or 17 friends and institutions, with the remaining funds to be used for a scholarship in his name. Michelle Finnegan was a beneficiary to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in each will. At some point, Mr. Urban was diagnosed with dementia, but the court heard testimony from the attorney and witnesses to the will that Mr. Urban appeared cognizant when he met with them and signed “of his own free will, without undue influence or constraint.”

In 2016, Ms. Finnegan flew from Florida to Massachusetts and presented Mr. Urban with an agreement, drafted by another lawyer, naming Ms. Finnegan as the personal representative and sole beneficiary of the estate.

In 2019, Mr. Urban passed away at the age of ninety-seven. Attorney Singleton filed a probate proceeding to admit the 2016 will to probate. Soon after, Ms. Finnegan filed a challenge and a claim against the estate for $5 million for care of Mr. Urban when he was in Florida. Eleven beneficiaries of the will, including the scholarship fund, objected to Ms. Finnegan’s challenge.

Ms. Finnegan’s challenge stated that the 2016 will was a product of ‘undue influence,’ that is “'that an (1) unnatural disposition has been made (2) by a person susceptible to undue influence to the advantage of someone (3) with an opportunity to exercise undue influence and (4) who in fact has used that opportunity to procure the contested disposition through improper means.'" In other words, beneficiaries of the will forced Mr. Urban, who was susceptible to influence due to his illness, to leave them property.

Normally, the challenger to the will has the burden of proving the undue influence. However, when the proponent is a financial beneficiary the burden shifts to the proponent of the will to prove the absence of undue influence. The court found that, because Mr. Urban executed his will with the assistance of independent legal counsel, the burden had been met, and the lower court’s decision in favor of the beneficiaries was proper.

As for the 2016 agreement, the court found it to be a product of undue influence. Mr. Urban was proud of his scholarship plan and intended to leave his many close friends with bequests, hence it would have been unnatural indeed to scrap his plans and to name Ms. Finnegan as the sole beneficiary.

As a capper, the court observed in a footnote that Mr. Urban’s will contained an in terrorem clause, meaning that if any beneficiary challenged the will, their claim was forfeited. So in the end, Ms. Finnegan’s gambit will prove costly.

Full text of the decision can be read here. If you need your own independent legal counsel, contact the team at Levine Law.