Proving a Will Is Forged or Fraudulent

Louisiana’s Requirements for a Last Will and Testament

Louisiana presumes that most adults have the legal capacity to create a will. However, wills must still comply with state law. The Bayou State recognizes two categories of wills:

• Notarial wills. A notarial will is written, signed, and attested by at least two competent witnesses. Notarial wills must also be stamped by a notary public. A notarial will is only valid if:

• The will is written.
• The will-writer, or testator, is of sound mind.
• The will is signed on each page, including the last.
• The will is attested by at least two competent witnesses and stamped by a notary public.

• Olographic wills. An olographic will is written entirely in the testator’s own handwriting. While olographic wills do not require witness attestation, they must be signed and dated. While olographic wills have no such requirements and may be valid only with a date and signature, they are comparably easy to modify and forge.

Challenging a Forged or Fraudulent Will

When the estate executor initiates a succession, they must send notice of the proceedings to each party interested in the estate. Under most circumstances, interested parties include the deceased person’s family members, named heirs, and creditors. Upon receiving notice of succession, interested parties have a legal right to request information about the decedent’s will and its provisions.

If an interested party suspects that a will is forged or fraudulent, they may file a will contest in court. A will could be challenged if:

• An interested party believes the will is forged. Evidence of forgery is sufficient for the Louisiana succession court to declare the will invalid, either in part or in its entirety. In order to prove that a will is forged, the testator may have to locate samples of the testator’s handwriting and have the samples analyzed by a handwriting expert. Often, a reputed expert’s opinion is sufficient to prove forgery.
• An interested party believes the will is fraudulent. A will is fraudulent if the testator was induced to make estate decisions predicated upon either misrepresentation or fabrication. Proving fraud is usually easiest when the testator is still alive. 
• An interested party believes the testator was subject to coercion or undue influence. While state law presumes that most adults have the legal capacity to write a will and create their own estate plan, the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure mandates that testators both be of sound mind and acting of their own accord. However, not all forms of mental illness necessarily disqualify a Bayou State resident from writing a will. If you believe that a loved one’s will was subject to coercion or undue influence, a Louisiana probate attorney could help you collect the evidence needed to prove your claim.

The Burden of Proof in Will Contests

A will contest can only be filed by an interested party. Since a will contest is technically considered a lawsuit, prospective litigants must be able to demonstrate that they have the legal standing necessary to bring a complaint before the court.

Typically, a complainant in a will contest must be able to show that they have an interest in the estate and will suffer damages if the will is recognized as valid.

However, even if you have the requisite standing to file a will contest, the court will expect that you furnish compelling evidence of fraud or forgery. Since the state presumes that most adults have the capacity to write a will, you will need to counter this presumption by collecting evidence of your argument. This could include:

• Handwriting samples
• Expert analyses
• Eyewitness testimony
• Medical records
• An original copy of the will

If a will is proven invalid by fraud or forgery, the person or party responsible for modifying the will could face criminal prosecution.

Contact a Louisiana Succession Attorney

If you believe your loved one’s will is a product of fraud or forgery, please call Scott Law Group – Estate Counsel at 504-264-1057 to get started on your case.

The Legal Standard for Proving Will Forgery in Louisiana

Proving that a will is forged in Louisiana requires overcoming the presumption of validity that attaches to a will that appears regular on its face. When a will has been admitted to probate — accepted by the court as valid — the party challenging it bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that it is a forgery. This is a higher practical bar than it might initially appear, because a will that was professionally prepared and executed before a notary and witnesses creates a paper trail of professional involvement that forgery challengers must explain away. The notary who supervised the execution, the witnesses who signed alongside the testator, and the law firm that prepared the document may all need to be confronted with the forgery allegation and their testimony evaluated against the forensic evidence.

The legal elements of will forgery in Louisiana are essentially the same as forgery in any legal context: the document is not what it purports to be. The testator’s signature is not genuine — it was placed on the document by someone other than the testator, either by signing the testator’s name or by copying the signature mechanically. The document itself may be entirely fabricated, or a genuine document may have been altered — provisions changed, beneficiaries added or removed, the date modified — after the testator executed it. Will fraud, as distinguished from pure forgery, may involve the testator signing a document but being deceived about what the document was — believing they were signing something unrelated to a will, or being presented with a will that had been substituted for the document they intended to sign.

Louisiana courts evaluate forgery allegations with serious attention to the evidence precisely because the stakes are high and the allegations are inherently serious. A court that declares a will a forgery is finding that a crime was committed — and potentially that the persons who presented the will for probate knew it was fraudulent. The evidentiary threshold reflects the seriousness of this finding: evidence of forgery must be clear and convincing, not merely suggestive. An heir who believes a will is forged based solely on family gossip or discomfort with the distribution will not prevail. Evidence of forgery must be objective, documented, and capable of persuading a judge that the will cannot be what it appears to be.

Evidence That Courts Accept in Louisiana Will Forgery Cases

Forensic document examination is the cornerstone of most will forgery cases. A qualified forensic document examiner — a specialist who analyzes handwriting, ink composition, paper characteristics, and document structure — can determine whether a signature matches the testator’s known genuine signatures, whether the ink and paper are consistent with the document’s purported date, and whether there is evidence that the document was altered after its original creation. Handwriting comparison uses exemplars — samples of the testator’s authentic handwriting from other documents, ideally samples contemporaneous with the will’s claimed execution date — to determine whether the signature on the will was made by the same hand. When the exemplars clearly show that the signatures do not match, this scientific evidence provides powerful support for a forgery claim.

Witness testimony is equally important. The notary and the attesting witnesses who were present at the will’s execution can testify about the circumstances of the signing — whether the person who signed matched the testator’s appearance and demeanor, whether they appeared to understand what they were signing, and whether the execution proceeded according to the normal formalities. A notary who cannot recall the execution or whose testimony is inconsistent with the documentary record raises suspicion. A witness who did not actually observe the signature being placed on the document, or who was not present at the same time as the testator, has information that directly contradicts the document’s claim that the execution formalities were followed. Testimony that the notary or witnesses were not actually present at the claimed execution date can effectively destroy the will’s validity independent of the handwriting analysis.

Circumstantial evidence rounds out the forgery case. When the will’s distribution scheme is radically inconsistent with the testator’s clearly expressed wishes during their lifetime, that inconsistency suggests fraud — a genuine will reflecting the testator’s actual intentions would not produce such a surprising result. When the will was prepared by someone who stood to benefit from it rather than by an independent attorney, the process itself is suspect. When the will surfaced under unusual circumstances — appearing for the first time after the funeral at the hands of a person who happens to receive the largest bequest — the timing of its emergence raises questions that must be answered. None of these circumstantial facts is independently sufficient to prove forgery, but in combination with forensic evidence, they build a compelling case that courts have found persuasive in upholding forgery challenges.

What Happens After a Forged Will Is Exposed in Louisiana

When a Louisiana court finds that a will is forged, the court declares the will void and of no legal effect. The estate then passes either under a prior valid will — if the decedent had an earlier will that was validly executed and not revoked — or under Louisiana’s intestate succession laws, as if no will had ever existed. The heirs who were named in the forged will and who presented it for probate do not receive the bequests they claimed. If they received any distributions under the invalid will before the forgery was discovered, they are obligated to return those distributions to the estate so that the correct distribution can be made to the legitimate heirs.

The person who forged the will faces serious legal consequences beyond losing any inheritance they sought to obtain. Will forgery is a criminal offense under Louisiana law — it falls within the general forgery statutes, which carry significant criminal penalties. When the evidence of forgery is strong, the Louisiana Attorney General’s office or the district attorney’s office may pursue criminal charges independently of the civil succession proceeding. A person who presents a forged will for probate while knowing it to be forged commits an additional offense. The civil and criminal proceedings are separate, but evidence developed in the civil case is often relevant to the criminal investigation and may support criminal charges even when the civil proceeding is the primary forum for resolving the succession dispute.

The unworthiness doctrine under Louisiana Civil Code article 941 applies when a person participated in forging a will or presenting a forged will: a person declared unworthy is excluded from the succession and forfeits any inheritance they might otherwise have received — not just the inheritance claimed under the forged will, but any inheritance they would have received under a prior will or under intestate succession. Unworthiness is a drastic sanction that reflects the law’s strong condemnation of fraud in the succession process. When combined with criminal prosecution and civil liability for any assets improperly received under the forged document, the consequences for will forgery in Louisiana are severe enough to deter all but the most determined and dishonest parties — and to fully compensate legitimate heirs when deterrence fails.