Probate and Trust Litigation
When a will or trust is challenged, the dispute is rarely only about money. We litigate contested estates and trusts for Pacific Northwest families, fiduciaries, and beneficiaries, from a will contest or a trustee who won't account to a fight over what a trust really means, and we use Washington's TEDRA process to resolve them.
Talk to an attorneyFounded
1965
Attorneys
11
AV-rated
Martindale-Hubbell
Office
Bellevue, WA
Founded
1965
Attorneys
5
AV-rated
Martindale-Hubbell
Office
Bellevue, WA
Probate and trust litigation lawyers for Bellevue and Seattle families
Oseran Hahn litigates probate and trust disputes for the families, beneficiaries, and fiduciaries caught in them. These cases are personal and procedural at once: grief and old family tension on one side, and on the other a specialized body of Washington trust and estate law with short deadlines and its own dispute-resolution statute. We handle will contests, trust validity and interpretation fights, breach of fiduciary duty by trustees and personal representatives, and heirship and creditor disputes, all driven through the TEDRA process. This is the courtroom counterpart to the planning our estate group does.
A probate or trust dispute is a fight over what a person intended and whether the people in charge are honoring it. We litigate will contests over capacity, undue influence, and execution. We resolve trust disputes over a trust's validity, meaning, and whether it can be changed. We pursue and defend breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims against trustees and personal representatives, including demands for an accounting and removal. We bring these matters through Washington's TEDRA process, which supplies the petitions, the binding settlement mechanism, and the mediation that resolves most of them. And we handle the heirship, creditor, and administration disputes that arise as an estate is settled.
Will contests
A will contest challenges whether a will is valid, and Washington gives a narrow window to bring one: generally four months after the will is admitted to probate (RCW 11.24.010). The grounds are specific. Lack of testamentary capacity, where the person didn't understand what they owned or who their heirs were. Undue influence, where someone in a position of trust overbore the testator's free will, which Washington analyzes through the suspicious-circumstances factors of Dean v. Jordan. Fraud, forgery, and improper execution measured against the signing formalities the statute requires (RCW 11.12.020). We bring contests for those who were wronged and defend wills against opportunistic challenges, including enforcing no-contest clauses, which Washington courts will apply but not where the challenge was brought in good faith and with probable cause (In re Estate of Mumby).
Trust disputes: validity, interpretation, and modification
Trusts generate their own litigation, often years after they're signed. We litigate challenges to a trust's validity on the same capacity and undue-influence grounds as wills, disputes over what ambiguous trust language actually means, and petitions to modify, reform, or terminate a trust when circumstances or mistakes require it. Washington allows trusts to be changed in ways many people don't realize, including decanting an old trust into a new one with better terms (RCW 11.107) and modification through the TEDRA process. When a trustee should be replaced, we petition for removal (RCW 11.98.039). The throughline is matching the trust's administration to what the settlor actually intended, by agreement where possible and by court order where not.
Trustee and personal-representative misconduct
Beneficiaries are often at the mercy of whoever controls the estate or trust, and when that person breaches their duty, the law provides real remedies. Trustees and personal representatives owe duties of loyalty, prudence, and impartiality (RCW 11.98.070), must invest as a prudent investor would (RCW 11.100), and must account for what they've done (RCW 11.106). When a fiduciary self-deals, favors one beneficiary, sits on assets, or simply goes silent, we move to compel a full accounting, surcharge the fiduciary for losses, and remove them where warranted (RCW 11.98.039 for trustees; RCW 11.28.250 for personal representatives). We also defend fiduciaries who acted in good faith against beneficiaries second-guessing reasonable decisions after the fact.
TEDRA: the engine that drives these disputes
Washington channels nearly every trust and estate dispute through one statute, the Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act, or TEDRA (RCW 11.96A), and knowing how to use it is much of the practice. TEDRA supplies a flexible petition for almost any question, broad authority for the court to resolve it, and rules for who must receive notice, including virtual representation that binds minors and unborn beneficiaries through others with the same interest. Its most powerful feature is the binding nonjudicial settlement agreement, which lets the interested parties resolve a dispute by signed agreement with the force of a court order (RCW 11.96A.220). TEDRA also builds in mediation and then arbitration before trial (RCW 11.96A.300), and most of these matters resolve there. We use the statute to move disputes toward a binding resolution without a full trial whenever the family will allow it.
Heirship, creditor, and estate-administration disputes
Not every estate fight is about a will or trust; many arise from administering the estate itself. We litigate heirship and intestacy disputes when someone dies without a valid will and the heirs must be determined under Washington's succession statute (RCW 11.04.015), claims by an omitted spouse or child left out of an existing will (RCW 11.12.091 and RCW 11.12.095), and creditor-claim disputes over what the estate owes (RCW 11.40). We also handle conflicts over the administration itself: contested appointments of a personal representative, challenges to a final accounting or declaration of completion, and disagreements over how and when assets get distributed. These are the disputes that surface as an estate moves from death to distribution, and resolving them is what lets the estate finally close.
Sixty years counseling Pacific Northwest families, with an estate-planning group that drafts these wills and trusts and a trial group that litigates them when they're contested. We know these disputes are as much about relationships as law, so we push toward the binding settlement TEDRA makes possible, and we try the cases that truly can't be settled.
We know the plan and the courtroom.
Our estate group builds these wills and trusts; our litigators contest and defend them. Lawyers who know how an estate plan is supposed to work make sharper arguments about what went wrong.
We use TEDRA to settle, not just to sue.
The statute's binding settlement and mediation tools resolve most of these disputes without a trial. We reach for them first, because a negotiated resolution usually serves a grieving family better than a verdict.
We move fast on the short deadlines.
A will contest has a four-month window, and fiduciary misconduct compounds while assets sit. We act quickly to preserve rights, compel accountings, and protect the estate before more is lost.
The attorneys behindthe work.
Our business and corporate attorneys handle this work alongside our litigation team, so you have coverage whether your matter stays transactional or becomes something more.
What clientsask us first.
I think my parent's will was changed under pressure. Can I challenge it?
Possibly, but you have to move quickly. Washington generally allows a will contest only within four months after the will is admitted to probate (RCW 11.24.010), and undue influence is one of the recognized grounds. Courts look at suspicious circumstances, a confidential relationship with the person who benefited, involvement in procuring the will, and similar factors drawn from Dean v. Jordan. We evaluate the timing, the medical and financial records, and the circumstances of the signing to determine whether a contest is viable, and we act fast because the window is short.
What is TEDRA?
TEDRA is Washington's Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act (RCW 11.96A), the procedural framework for nearly every trust and estate dispute in the state. It provides a flexible court petition for almost any question, rules for notifying interested parties, and, importantly, a way for the parties to resolve a dispute by binding written agreement instead of trial (RCW 11.96A.220). It also requires mediation before a case can be forced to trial. Most trust and estate disputes in Washington are brought and resolved under TEDRA, and using it well is central to how these cases get handled.
The trustee won't tell us anything or send an accounting. What can we do?
You have rights, and the trustee has duties. A trustee must administer the trust loyally and prudently and must account to beneficiaries for what they've done (RCW 11.98.070 and RCW 11.106). When a trustee goes silent, we petition the court to compel a full accounting, and a trustee who has mismanaged or self-dealt can be surcharged for the losses and removed (RCW 11.98.039). Forcing the accounting is usually the first step, because it reveals what actually happened with the assets and frequently drives the rest of the case.
How is this different from the estate planning your firm does?
It's the litigation side of the same world. Our estate-planning group drafts the wills, trusts, and powers of attorney and helps administer estates that aren't in dispute. This practice takes over when something is contested: a will challenged, a trust fought over, a fiduciary accused of misconduct, an estate's heirs in disagreement. The two work closely together, which helps, because lawyers who know how the plan was supposed to function are better at proving, or defending, what happened when it didn't.
Can a trust be changed after the person who created it has died?
Sometimes, more than people expect. Washington law allows trusts to be modified, reformed, or even decanted into a new trust in certain circumstances, including to correct mistakes, address changed conditions, or fix administrative problems (RCW 11.107 for decanting), and the interested parties can also agree to changes through a binding TEDRA settlement (RCW 11.96A.220). An irrevocable trust isn't always as fixed as its name suggests. Whether a change is possible depends on the trust's terms, the reason for it, and who consents, which we assess case by case.
When should I bring in a probate litigator?
As soon as you suspect a problem, and especially if a will contest may be in play, because of the four-month deadline. Early involvement lets us preserve records and assets, demand an accounting before more is spent, and position the matter within TEDRA before deadlines pass. Estate and trust disputes also tend to harden as family positions calcify, so early, measured legal involvement often opens a path to settlement that gets harder to find later. The first call is about protecting both your rights and the relationships.
Recentarticles.
Will contests, trust disputes, and fiduciary litigation under TEDRA for Pacific Northwest families, beneficiaries, and fiduciaries.
Oseran Hahn P.S. · 11225 SE 6th St, Suite 100 · Bellevue, WA 98004
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