Who has standing to contest a will?

Who is allowed to bring a will contest, a threshold question separate from grounds, using Florida and California's own definitions as two worked examples.

Before a court asks why a will might be wrong, it asks a narrower question first: whether this particular person is even allowed to raise that argument. Not everyone unhappy with how an estate was left gets to challenge it. That threshold question is called standing, and it's separate from the grounds for a contest covered in grounds for contesting a will.

The general starting point: in order to commence a will contest, a person must first have an interest in the will. In plain terms, that means someone who stands to gain or lose depending on whether the will is upheld.

Source: Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, Wex, "will contest"

How that interest gets defined isn't the same everywhere. There is no single national standing statute: each state writes and enumerates its own. Florida and California, read side by side, show two different ways of writing the same underlying idea.

Florida

Florida writes standing as an open list. Under Fla. Stat. §733.109, any interested person, including as one named example a beneficiary under a prior will, may bring a proceeding to revoke probate, unless barred under two specific provisions of Florida's probate code. The word "including" signals that the named example doesn't close the list: other people can qualify as an interested person too.

Source: Fla. Stat. §733.109, Revocation of probate

Florida's own definitions section spells out who that reaches. It defines an interested person as anyone who "may reasonably be expected to be affected by the outcome of the particular proceeding involved," adding that the meaning "may vary from time to time" depending on which proceeding is involved. It separately defines "heirs" as those entitled to a decedent's property under Florida's statutes of intestate succession, and a "devisee" as a person named in a will or trust to receive a devise. A "beneficiary," in turn, means whichever of the two actually applies: an heir at law in an intestate estate, a devisee in a testate one.

Source: Fla. Stat. §731.201, General definitions

California

California's definitions section takes a different shape. It names interested person as including an heir, devisee, child, spouse, creditor, beneficiary, and any other person having a property right in or claim against the estate that a proceeding may affect, plus anyone with priority for appointment as personal representative. Its own text adds that what the term means for a particular person may vary depending on the purpose of the proceeding it's applied to: the same open, case-by-case shape as Florida's, just organized as a named list rather than a bare "any interested person, including."

Source: Cal. Prob. Code §48, "Interested person"

California keeps heir and devisee as two separate categories within that list, rather than one folded into the other. An heir is any person, including a surviving spouse, entitled to take property by intestate succession. A devisee is any person named in a will to receive a devise (if the gift instead names a trust or trustee, the trust or trustee is the devisee, not the trust's own beneficiaries).

Source: Cal. Prob. Code §44, "Heir"

Under Cal. Prob. Code §6400, any part of an estate a will doesn't effectively dispose of still passes to the decedent's heirs, under the same intestacy rules the heir definition above points to. Intestacy can apply to part of an estate alongside a valid will, not only when a person dies without one. So someone can be an heir, and therefore an interested person, even where a valid will exists and covers most of the estate.

Source: Cal. Prob. Code §6400, intestate succession

Two states, two ways of writing the same idea

Both states reach further than the people named in the will actually being probated, just by different mechanisms. Florida does it by naming a beneficiary under a prior will as one example within its open list: someone who would have inherited under an earlier document has an interest the current will could defeat. California does it by keeping heir and devisee as separate categories in its own list, so someone who would inherit only if the will failed can still qualify.

Neither test is a nationwide rule. They're two states' answers to the same question, shown here as worked examples of how differently it gets written. The state actually administering an estate, or a lawyer admitted there, is what can say who counts as an interested person in a specific case.

Standing is one of the first things worth raising in a first consultation, alongside the grounds a lawyer thinks the facts support. How to choose a probate litigator covers what else to ask. If it's the grounds you're unsure about rather than who can raise them, grounds for contesting a will covers what has to be wrong with a will, and do I have grounds to contest a will? walks through a few common signals.

These two worked examples don't establish whether you personally have standing in a specific estate, and Florida and California are not the only two ways the test gets written. This is general information, not legal advice, and it isn't a substitute for advice from a lawyer admitted in the state where the estate is being administered.