When the People Helping With a Will Receive Most of the Estate: Dankbar
Someone helping with an estate plan may schedule appointments, gather information, or provide transportation. Those acts can be useful. But if that person also receives a substantial gift, the circumstances may deserve closer attention.
The issue is not whether the person was involved at all. It is whether the will reflected the testator’s own decision.
What happened in Dankbar?
In Estate of Dankbar, 430 N.W.2d 124 (Iowa 1988), Patricia Dankbar’s will left most of her estate to her conservator and her attorney. Her father challenged it. A jury found that she lacked testamentary capacity and that the will resulted from undue influence. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the judgment invalidating it.
The conservator had selected the drafting attorney and supplied notes describing Patricia’s purported instructions. The Court considered the evidence in the context of her condition and the relationships involved.
The opinion described four undue-influence elements: susceptibility, an opportunity to exert influence, a disposition to procure an improper favor, and a result clearly caused by that influence. It also recognized that circumstantial evidence can establish undue influence. The case involved a developed trial record, not an automatic rule invalidating gifts to helpers.
What is the difference between help and control?
Imagine an adult child driving a parent to an attorney’s office. That fact alone leaves many questions unanswered. Did the parent choose the attorney? Could the parent explain their wishes privately? Who supplied the proposed instructions?
These questions are useful because they distinguish an ordinary act of assistance from a possible attempt to direct the result. They are starting points for investigation, not a checklist that proves a case.
Iowa’s basic will statute, section 633.264, recognizes a qualified person’s ability to dispose of property by will. The purpose of reviewing influence is to determine whether the document represents that person’s exercise of choice.
What can families learn?
A family member concerned about a will should preserve specific information: communications about appointments, earlier documents, and the names of witnesses who observed relevant events. Describing what someone actually said or did is more useful than attaching a label to the relationship.
Capacity and undue influence also need to be considered separately. One concerns the person’s ability to make the decision; the other concerns the effect of another person’s conduct on that decision.
Dankbar shows why the finished document is only part of the evidence. Understanding how it came to be written can be just as important as reading who received the property.
Tyler ThompsonAuthor