Will Contests, Trustee Disputes, and TEDRA in Washington

What TEDRA is, and why Washington is different

The Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act, Chapter 11.96A RCW, is Washington's unified framework for resolving disagreements about estates, trusts, powers of attorney, and nonprobate assets. It is unusual in two respects.

The first is breadth. TEDRA defines a "matter" expansively and gives the superior court authority over essentially any dispute arising under Title 11 RCW, so one procedure handles a will construction question, a trustee accounting demand, and a removal petition alike. An action is commenced by filing a petition under RCW 11.96A.100, which differs from ordinary civil practice where service can start the case.

The second is that TEDRA pushes disputes toward resolution rather than trial. It contains its own mediation and arbitration track, and it gives the court a broad fee-shifting power. Under RCW 11.96A.150 a court may award costs and attorney fees to any party, from any other party or from the assets of the estate or trust, as it determines to be equitable. That provision reaches all of Title 11 and is not limited by the narrower fee statutes elsewhere in it; the Supreme Court has applied it in a will contest. The effect is that both sides carry risk from the first filing, which disciplines marginal claims and stonewalling fiduciaries alike.

The deadline, which is the first thing to find out

A will contest must be brought within four months of the order admitting the will to probate, or rejecting it. RCW 11.24.010. If no contest is filed in that window, the probate or rejection is binding and final.

The cases are unforgiving. The four months is not extended by CR 6(e) even where interested parties received notice of the will's admission by mail. The contest is commenced by filing, not service, and the contestant must then personally serve the personal representative within ninety days of filing; failure means the action is deemed never commenced for limitations purposes. The courts have also rejected electronic mail as sufficient service. Untimely service has been treated as a total failure to comply rather than substantial compliance.

The clock therefore starts when the will is admitted, not when you find out about it, and not when you learn the facts that make you suspicious.

Who can contest

Standing is a threshold question, not a formality. Under RCW 11.24.010 "any person interested" may contest, which the courts have defined as a person with a direct, immediate, and legally ascertainable interest in the devolution of the estate, one that would be impaired by probate of the will or benefited by a declaration that it is invalid. The interest must be a present pecuniary one with the characteristics of a property right. Intestate heirs qualify, as do beneficiaries under a prior will who would receive less under the will being challenged. Moral claims, however genuine, do not.

The grounds, and the one that actually gets litigated

A will can be challenged for lack of testamentary capacity, undue influence, improper execution, or fraud. They are not equally useful.

Capacity is difficult because the presumption runs the other way. Where a will is rational on its face and executed with the required formalities, the law presumes the testator had capacity. The standard is also lower than people assume, requiring an understanding of the transaction, a comprehension of the nature and extent of the property, and a recollection of the natural objects of the testator's bounty. A dementia diagnosis is not the same thing as incapacity on the day of signing.

Improper execution is mechanical. It either happened correctly or it did not.

Undue influence is where these cases live, because it is provable circumstantially and because it describes what actually happens. The governing authority sets out what courts since have called the signposts of undue influence. The three most important are that the beneficiary occupied a fiduciary or confidential relationship with the testator, that the beneficiary actively participated in preparing or procuring the will, and that the beneficiary received an unusually or unnaturally large part of the estate. Added to those are the testator's age and condition of health and mental vigor, the nature and degree of the relationship, the opportunity to exert influence, and the naturalness of the will itself.

The procedural consequence is what makes this ground powerful. A sufficient combination of a confidential relationship and suspicious circumstances can raise a presumption of undue influence and shift the burden to the beneficiary to prove the will was not procured by it, and shifting that burden frequently decides the case. Where the influence affected only part of the instrument, RCW 11.24.010 and.040 allow a will to be partially invalidated rather than thrown out entirely.

Fiduciary disputes: accountings and removal

Many estate disputes are not about the document but about the person administering it.

Trustees have a statutory duty to account. Under Chapter 11.106 RCW a trustee appointed by will, deed, or agreement must give permissible distributees annual statements of receipts and disbursements, and any party may petition for an accounting under RCW 11.96A.080. The duty of loyalty is codified at RCW 11.98.078, which the Court of Appeals has applied to personal representatives holding nonintervention powers.

Removal of a personal representative is available under RCW 11.28.250 for waste, embezzlement, mismanagement, fraud, incompetence, wrongful neglect, or any other necessary cause. Where the personal representative holds nonintervention powers, RCW 11.68.070 supplies the route, and a prevailing petitioner may recover attorney fees. On the trust side, an action against the trustee of an express trust for breach of fiduciary duty must be brought within three years of the earliest of discovery or reasonable discovery of the breach, the trustee's discharge, or termination of the trust.

The mediation and arbitration track

This part of TEDRA has no close analog, and it is why a Washington estate dispute does not have to become a trial.

Under RCW 11.96A.300 any party may cause a matter to be subject to mediation by serving a statutory notice of mediation. A party who does not want to mediate must affirmatively object within a short statutory window, and the notice and objection procedures are exacting enough that the Court of Appeals has found a notice non-compliant.

If mediation fails, arbitration is available under RCW 11.96A.310 on a parallel structure. An arbitration decision can be appealed by requesting a trial de novo within thirty days of its filing, and there the fee consequence hardens: RCW 11.96A.310(10) makes an award of costs and attorney fees to the prevailing party mandatory, taking precedence over the court's general discretion.

Alongside this, RCW 11.96A.220 lets the parties resolve a matter by written nonjudicial agreement carrying the same effect as a court order, including modifying or terminating a trust, provided all parties consent. Where a party is a minor, incapacitated without a guardian of the estate, unborn, unascertained, or cannot be located, a special representative may be appointed to bind that party. RCW 11.96A.250.

Where this goes wrong

Waiting. This is the one that ends cases before they start. Families spend the four months after the will is admitted gathering documents, talking to relatives, and deciding whether they really want to do this. By the time the decision is made the right to contest is gone, and no amount of evidence revives it. The contest statute has no tolling for disability and no equitable exception.

Litigating a small estate into nothing. Fee-shifting under RCW 11.96A.150 cuts both ways, and legal fees are indifferent to the size of the estate. A dispute over a few tens of thousands of dollars can consume a meaningful fraction of it while the parties establish who was right. Deciding early and honestly what the realistic recovery is, measured against cost, is part of the representation.

"He promised me the house." Oral promises to leave property are not hopeless in Washington, but they are hard. A claimant must prove the decedent agreed to leave the property, that the services contemplated as consideration were actually rendered, and that they were rendered in reliance on the contract. The evidentiary bar is high: the contract must be established by evidence that is conclusive, definite, and beyond all legitimate controversy. Years of caretaking with nothing in writing is the most common version, and the claims that succeed tend to involve substantial, documented care.

Why this is lawyer work

The first task in an estate dispute is not building the argument. It is figuring out what the clock says: which deadline governs, when it started, and whether the thing you intend to file is a will contest under Chapter 11.24 RCW, a fiduciary action, a creditor claim, or a contract claim, because each carries different limitation periods and standards. Getting that wrong is usually fatal and rarely fixable. After that the work is evaluative. Whether a given set of facts raises the undue influence presumption and shifts the burden is a judgment experience informs, as is whether a dispute belongs in mediation, in arbitration, or in front of a judge.

About my practice

I handle trust and estate disputes from my office in downtown Spokane, alongside the estate planning and probate work that produces most of them. I represent beneficiaries challenging wills and trusts, fiduciaries defending their administration, and parties on both sides of accounting and removal petitions. I appear in superior courts across Washington, most often in Spokane, Klickitat, Kittitas, Benton, Franklin and Yakima counties, and I use TEDRA's mediation and nonjudicial agreement procedures where they can resolve a matter without the cost of trial.

Talk to me

If a will has recently been admitted to probate and something about it does not sit right, the timing matters more than anything else you will read here. I offer a free initial consultation by appointment in downtown Spokane.

Disclaimer

This article is general information about Washington law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Law changes, and how it applies depends on facts specific to your situation. If you have a question about your own circumstances, speak with a lawyer.