Wills and trusts have an interesting history in a culture as heavily influenced by British common law as our own. The bequests of wills have been the pole star around which a great deal of mystery fiction has been written where furtive and anxious relatives wait around a long imposing table to hear what is to become of the family fortune and thus; what is to become of them. As usual, fiction and the media give one side of what something has been or is, while the other side of the tale exists behind the scenes or on an obscure back page of a newspaper.

What is not often shown about a will is that it is contested. Perhaps this is because the craving for legal courtroom drama is a relatively new phenomenon, and perhaps because the way the family members behave toward one another over large sums of money is too violent even for television. Wills are contested in long bitter rivalries that often leave no member of the family unscathed. Often there are two opposing camps and each relative must decide which