What rights do I have if I was mailed the wrong copy of a Will?

Question

The whole family recieved the wrong copy, we only found this out after we signed it and sent it back. The new version of the the will I am not in. So is there any legal action I can take.

Answer 1

Well, I believe that the courts will want the official copy of the will to be enforced and not the one that accidentally got sent. The will represents the final wishes of the deceased. The lawyer seems to have made a mistake and sent the wrong copy. However, that is not the fault of the deceased person. I do not see why this should invalidate his/her final wishes.

Answer 2

That depends. If for some reason the will was recorded before you signed it, then you can get them to resend copies of the accurate will, sign it, get it notarized, and re-record it. If you got someone else's will and signed it by accident and it got recorded, it has no legal standing. It'd doesn't even need to be voided. Whoever is responsible for the execution of that will just has to record it with correct signatures, and it will overrule the other. If you were mailed a will with the wrong wording than what you thought it was but signed it without checking, there are two possible options. If the grantor in the will is still living, you can simply rerecord the will with the correct wording and it will trump the other by virtue of recency. If the grantor is not living and you signed off on it, you are mostly out of luck. You should carefully read through any legal document before signing it. Should this be the case, you can possibly take action against a lawyer who perhaps misrepresented the contents of the will to you and your family, but if this was something done without a lawyer (merely through your family and the chancery clerk's office) then you are out of luck. They are not responsible for you not reading it.
If the fault is the lawyers, at the least he or she should offer to rectify the error by not charging for the additional service.