greetings and happy halloween everyone or at least when i'm recording this it's uh halloween eve uh tomorrow night being halloween and uh i thought what better time to talk about an interim clause my name is daryl cartwright i'm an estate planning attorney based in birmingham alabama and uh wanted to give you a short video to talk about this peculiarly named provision that you sometimes hear about talked in terms of uh estate planning in wills an interim clause is basically probably about what you would expect it it seeks to terrorize someone it's also known as a no contest clause and the idea behind an interim clause is basically to prevent a beneficiary named under the will from contesting the will you basically are trying to as the testator keep someone from challenging your will or provisions of your will basically it is a conditional device that is given to uh devosee under your will that says look you get what i'm going to leave to you under the will but only if on the condition you don't challenge the will otherwise now in some states a an interim clause or no contest clause is not enforceable if there's probable cause to challenge the will and i will say that here in alabama interim provisions are not favored under the law and they are to be narrowly construed and i'll give you example for that in just a minute about a supreme court case that that addressed a similar type of provision now when would you use an interim provision is this what you would use if you wanted to disinherit someone and the answer there is no you would not use it in that event and the reason is if you disinherit them they have nothing to lose by challenging the will so what an interim provision says that you lose what you leave to them under the will if they challenge the will hence you've got to leave something to them in the first place so by definition if a beneficiary or someone is well they wouldn't be a beneficiary if they're not listed in the will but if if a potential deficient maybe a family member that is being disinherited or someone else doesn't receive anything under the terms of the will they cannot be terrorized if you will by the interim provision it's not going to be effective for them at all to keep them from challenging it would you use it if you left somebody a dollar under the terms of your will would that be an effective use well that technically would meet the definition it would meet the qualifications because the interim provision states that they lose what you leave to them under the terms of the will if they challenge it but a dollar really is that going to dissuade anyone or deter anyone from challenging the will and the answer there is clearly no it would not so that would not be the time kind of time that you'd want to use it instead when you'd want to use an interim provision is simply this you want to leave a beneficiary enough a substantial amount something that would cause them to have to think wait a minute i've got something at risk here something real at risk here and each one of these situations is different if you're dealing with a a million dollar estate and there are two children involved and one of them receives 995 000 and the other 5 thousand probably the five thousand dollars won't be substantial enough if they believe they have some sort of reasonable grounds to challenge the will to deter them from doing it so what they'll roll the dice for five thousand dollars thinking that maybe they're entitled to half of the estate but if you left that particular person a hundred thousand dollars compared to 900 000 for the other child would that be enough to make them think about this very carefully and my thoughts are that it generally would obviously it would depend upon the circumstances each individual situation is different but in my mind that generally would start the process wait a minute you mean if i can test this will and i'm not sure i really have any grounds for doing it anyway person's entitled to leave the property to whomever they wish and you're telling me if i challenge this i might lose that hundred thousand dollar device maybe i better not challenge the will that's what the interim provision is designed to do that's what it's for now a minute ago i said that alabama interim provisions are narrowly construed and they're disfavored under the law and they are and a good example of that is a supreme court case in 2007 in which the decedent's will had a provision and the provision said that a certain bequest was to be divided among several beneficiaries according to however they agree and if they couldn't agree then it would be determined by the executor the decedents will further stated that any further dispute by the beneficiaries would result in them being disqualified from that distribution well two of the beneficiaries after it was all said and done decided to bring a will contest they were unhappy they decided to bring a will contest and the supreme court held that their will contest did not violate that particular provision the supreme court said that the challenge of the disposition itself was not the same as distribution and hence it would not count as a disqualifying challenge in that situation now that the moral of the story here is uh that they are narrowly construed if you are going to have a an interim provision it needs to be very specifically drafted to address very specific situations so that in the event a challenge did occur it would clearly fall within the scope of the interim provision and the kind of things it was designed to protect otherwise you probably will not be have that act in an effective manner and our courts will not likely uphold it as i said it's generally not favored but it can be an effective deterrent i know that i have used this numerous times in my practice as have other attorneys throughout the state and we're doing it for a reason and the reason is to deter in that kind of situation so if you have a particular situation where you think that might be of value to you be sure and talk to your attorney about it and make sure that you discuss very specifically the concerns and what you want to address and have that tailor-made to fit that situation i hope that helps see you next time