Tortious interference with inheritance expectancy allows a disappointed beneficiary to sue the person who wrongfully caused them to lose an inheritance or gift they otherwise would have received. It is a separate civil tort, not a challenge to the validity of a will or trust, and it targets the wrongdoer's conduct directly -- typically fraud, forgery, duress, or undue influence exercised against the testator -- rather than the document the testator ultimately signed.

Not every jurisdiction recognizes the tort, and among those that do, courts are careful to keep it from becoming a backdoor way to relitigate an unfavorable probate outcome. The doctrine exists to reach wrongdoing that probate court cannot adequately remedy, not to give every disappointed heir a second bite at the apple.

A plaintiff generally must show: (1) the existence of an expectancy of an inheritance or gift; (2) intentional interference with that expectancy by the defendant; (3) tortious conduct independent of the interference itself, such as fraud, duress, undue influence, or forgery; (4) a reasonable certainty that the expectancy would have been realized but for the interference; and (5) resulting damages. The independent-tortious-conduct requirement is what separates this claim from a simple allegation that the testator changed their estate plan -- testators are free to change their minds for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all.

Because the claim requires reconstructing what the testator would have done absent the wrongdoing, causation is often the hardest element to prove, and courts scrutinize it closely to avoid awarding damages based on speculation about a hypothetical, never-executed estate plan.

A will contest is a probate proceeding challenging the validity of the will itself -- lack of capacity, improper execution, undue influence, or fraud in the will's making -- and its remedy is to admit or deny the document to probate. Tortious interference with inheritance expectancy is a separate civil action against the wrongdoer personally, and in many jurisdictions it can proceed even after probate has closed, seeking money damages from the wrongdoer rather than a ruling on the document's validity.

The distinction matters for remedies and timing: because the tort claim targets the wrongdoer rather than the will, it can potentially reach damages -- including punitive damages in some jurisdictions -- unavailable in a probate contest, and it may run on a different limitations clock than the deadline to contest a will.

Plaintiffs prove the tort with the same kind of evidence used in a will contest -- evidence of undue influence, forged signatures, isolation of the testator, or fraudulent misrepresentations -- but must also independently prove that, absent the wrongdoing, the plaintiff's expectancy would in fact have been realized, often reconstructed from prior estate-planning documents, statements by the testator, and family history.

The majority approach, sometimes called the adequate-remedy-in-probate rule, bars or defers the tort claim where probate court could have fully redressed the harm through a will contest -- meaning a plaintiff who could have contested the will and did not, or who lost that contest on the merits, may be barred from later suing in tort over the same conduct. Defendants also attack the claim on the certainty element, arguing the plaintiff's expected inheritance was too speculative to support damages.

In Juricratic, this claim is modeled with a threshold probate-adequacy gate ahead of the substantive elements -- in jurisdictions applying the adequate-remedy rule, a strong available probate remedy can zero out the tort claim's viability regardless of how strong the underlying undue-influence evidence looks. Only once that gate clears does the independent-tortious-conduct dial and the reasonable-certainty-of-inheritance dial drive the modeled exposure.

Because recognition of the tort itself varies by jurisdiction, an early dial should test whether the forum recognizes the cause of action at all before investing simulation weight in the downstream elements -- a jurisdiction that does not recognize the tort collapses the claim path entirely, no matter how egregious the alleged interference.