Litigation Involving a Will Contest to be determined by a Jury in NC
Will Contests in North Carolina (known as Will Caveats) are a special type of civil litigation. The statutes require that will contests can only be resolved with a jury trial, not a bench decision. There are a few newer exceptions, including that the parties involved can reach a written settlement that can be approved by a judge. However, before the statutes changed, even if the parties agreed to a settlement, it still had to be ruled upon by a jury. One amusing example where this was applied and backfired on the parties occurred while Judge Rousseau was a Superior Court Judge. Judge...
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