How can one prove that a contract was signed by force? I posted another question recently relating to the same person but I didn't want to include two questions in the same post. My father is an extremely abusive person and has been physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive throughout my life. When I was in college, he came to my apartment and forced me to sign a "contract" in which I would be forced to pay him $30000. This contract was essentially me writing out "I promise to pay $30000" with my signature at the bottom. I told him numerous times I did not want to sign anything without a lawyer present, and he threatened to hit me if I did not sign it. I even tried telling him I would sign it if it included that he never contact me after college, but he cornered me and raised his fist up in an attempt to punch me. That was 2 years ago, and he still has the contract and threatens to use it if I don't listen to him. Is there any way I can prove to someone that I was essentially forced to sign this contract, assuming he did try to use it?
If you do not get anything from this "contract", and all it says is that you will pay someone a sum of money "on demand", it does not meet the basic requirements to form a contract, and in particular, there is no consideration being received by you. It would therefore not be a contract and would have zero legal force. If you do receive consideration, demonstrating that you signed the contract under duress will require specific legal advice, and you need a practicing lawyer in your jurisdiction.
A deed executed during life trumps a will. The other siblings would have to argue: Your mom did not have the capacity to execute the deed (which is a very low standard in terms of her capacity). The deed was procured from undue influence from you (which requires them to meet a high bar of proof). The deed was really the implementation of an agreement for you to hold the property in trust for everyone (which requires some affirmative evidence of this intent).
I intend to close on the house as I've already signed all the loan paper work, but is there anything that can be done about a Realtor that breaks contract? You have probably waived your claim if you proceed with the deal knowing about the Realtor's conduct. What would your damages be? Could you have mitigated them by not agreeing to the deal? Also second question would it be better to seek a personal or Real estate attorney in such situations as this? Lawyers aren't that specialized. I would not recognize a "personal" attorney as something necessarily different from a "Real estate attorney" and the questions involved are not so complex that a general practice attorney couldn't handle them. Familiarity with real estate issues would be desirable (e.g. you wouldn't want to hire someone whose practice was exclusively as a criminal defense attorney or a personal injury lawyer, or a patent lawyer, for this task), but a great many lawyers who describe their practices differently would have the relevant experience and knowledge.
No Such a contract would be an attempt to evade the court order mandating a given level of support, and would not be enforceable. However it is not the case that no contract can deal with Child Custody or Child Support. A couple could surely make a contract to pay more than a court had ordered, that in no way violates the order. A contract could specify a default or initial amount of support, to be paid until and unless a court orders a different amount. Similarly a contract could specify initial custody, pending any court decision to the contrary, but it cannot preclude the court from making an order in accordance with the best interests of the child.
So you entered a contract that was a bad deal. The law says: tough People are legally allowed to make bad deals. The law will hold you to the bad deal you made. If it only worked for good deals, no one would ever use the law because you don’t want to break a good deal. Providing it has all the required elements of a contract, it will be enforceable. Put up with him or pay him out.
There is nothing in that contract that says anything about 3 months notice period. The 3 months is the legal default for contracts that do not expire on their own, unlike yours, that has all properties of a limited time contract. I would personally see the detailed description of how you can end this contract as overriding any legal default. But as always, with this specific contract in the original language, you need to see a lawyer to know for sure. Your contract clearly states: you can leave your appartment whenever you want, even before the agreed upon time. If you leave between the 15th and the end of a month, you have to pay for that month in full. If you leave between the 1st and the 14th of the month, you have to pay the fair share of the rent for the days you where there. So for example, on a 30 day month if you lived there for 10 days, you still have to pay a third of the rent and the landlord will return the rest if you paid for the month in advance. If you live there for 16 days, you have to pay for the full month and nothing will be returned if you paid for the month in advance. Please note that you need to &quot;hand over&quot; the vacated rental object during normal business hours. So don't go in there on the evening of the 14th at 16:59. And don't try to &quot;hand it over&quot; when you haven't moved your stuff out yet. At the hand over, you give the keys to the landlord and that is it, it is the last thing you do. Very likely your landlord will want to have a look at the rental object while you are there, so they can make sure it is all in order, you did not damage it or did not leave any of your stuff. Generally speaking, there is nothing your landlord could do to you if you decide to leave early. They cannot make you leave even earlier or any other retaliatory shenanigans you may have heard of in other countries. In Germany, such contracts are not adversarial. You don't need to keep it a secret to the last second. If you know you want to leave on a certain date, inform your land lord, make an appointment for the &quot;hand over&quot; well in advance and save yourself (and them) all the stress from doing things last minute.
What would be the best course of action now? It has been six months with no communication from him or his estate lawyer, and no will has been filed with the court. Since it's not entering probate, is there any guarantee that he has to faithfully execute the conditions of the will at all or notify any of the beneficiaries? Without probate, can he simply choose to not execute the will? A will has no effect or validity until it is admitted to probate. You can't do anything with a will outside a probate proceeding. Usually state law requires that a will that is in someone's possession be lodged with the court, whether or not they plan on opening up a probate estate, but this requirement is widely ignored. Unlike a will, a trust can be administered without court supervision, without being admitted to probate, although usually, the trust is required to file a notice of its existence with the court if it has become irrevocable (a requirement that is also widely ignored). The trustee of a trust has a fiduciary duty to administer the trust in accordance with its terms and to keep the beneficiaries of the trust reasonably informed about it. Again, sometimes the notice to the beneficiaries is overlooked. Also, it wouldn't be unusual for someone to inaccurately say that a will provided that a certain thing happen, when, in fact, that was a provision in a trust. People are sloppy in ordinary conversation about the distinctions between wills and trusts. If a trust was drafted to avoid probate, the will is probably just a "pour over will" which states that if there is any property that is not in the trust as her death that it is hereby transferred to the trust. Normally, a person would not have both a trust designed to avoid probate and a will with substantive provisions at the same time. If you suspect that you know who the trustee is, the first step would be to write a formal letter that you can prove was sent and received (e.g. via certified mail or FedEx), asking if there is a trust, and if there is one, if you are a beneficiary of that trust, and asking for the trust agreement (or at least the parts of it pertinent to you status as beneficiary). If the person that you suspect is trustee is a trustee, he has a legal duty to let you know these things (which doesn't mean that he necessarily will do so). If you fail to receive cooperation or a response after this initial inquiry, you may need to hire counsel to attempt to obtain this information through the courts.
A settlement is fundamentally a contract where parties A and B promise to do certain things (one of them being "stop litigating"). A court order is an enforceable order to do something. A contract cannot be directly enforced (where force is used to make a person comply), it requires a court order for actual enforcement. The conditions of a contract might be enforceable, but you can't get the sheriff to come out based just on a contract. It appears that you got to the "facilitation" phase where the parties talk about the issue and the CRT case manager talks to the parties in neutral terms, aiming for an agreement. If you don't reach an agreement, the Tribunal Decision Process escalates the matter. Under the decision process, the CRT member makes a decision, and it can be enforced in court. They state that "For a $25 fee, the CRT can turn your agreement into an order, if both parties agree that an order should be issued. This is called a “consent resolution order”." I suppose that you did not go through that step, and you only have an agreement. So you would need a separate court process to get a court order. Because everything that you did in this negotiation phase is confidential, if you want CRT to give you something that is enforceable, you have to present the case from the beginning, since they don't have access to what has happened before. The problem in your account is that a settlement has to be reached by yourselves – possibly with the assistance of the CRT case manager. I assume you did actually get a settlement (agreement) with the landlord, but have not filed for a consent resolution order. It may be that the case is too old for you to just pay the $25, and it does require agreement by the other party. Read their FAQ about how cases end.