New Jersey Appellate Division Affirms Trial Court’s Decision to Deny Undue Influence Claim Brought by Disinherited Children
In Re Estate of Kapila, No. A-2757-23, 2025 WL 1430418, (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. May 19, 2025)
Vikrant and Gitanjali (“Gita”), (collectively “Plaintiffs”) appealed the trial court’s dismissal of their undue influence claim and denial of their request for counsel fees against the estate of their father, Rajendra Kapila (“Decedent”) and his second wife (“Saxena”). The Appellate Division affirmed.
The Decedent was employed as a physician and professor of medicine and was married previously to Bina. Together, they had two children, Vikrant, and Gita. The Decedent and Bina divorced in 2008. The couple had been separated for more than twenty years.
The Decedent remarried Saxena in India on February 14, 2009. The Plaintiffs did not attend the wedding and were opposed to the new marriage because the Decedent began his relationship with Saxena while still being married to Bina. Before the new marriage, the Decedent visited Gita and her children in 2006, 2007, and 2008. The visits and contacts immediately stopped after the Decedent remarried. Thereafter, Gita’s relationship with the Decedent deteriorated, including hateful emails that would span over the next several years until his death.
Between 2015 and 2019, Gita emailed the Decedent, instructing him to stay away from her children. She asserted that she had left him alone for thirteen years and wanted nothing to do with him. She added that the only thought she had of him was of his death and that she hated both the Decedent and Saxena. As for Vikrant, he had not spoken to the Decedent since 2007. The only communication thereafter was in 2019 to wish the Decedent a happy birthday and, in 2021, to request money from him.
In February 2020, the Decedent updated his will using LegalZoom. At the time, the Decedent was over eighty years old, and he and Saxena created the will together. The will was drafted for “both [the Decedent] and Saxena at the same time,” and Saxena was the typist. Id. at *3. The Decedent reviewed and initialed each page of the will, and his review was evidenced by a handwritten correction he made on the will. At the Decedent’s request, two long-time family friends witnessed his will.
A year later, the Decedent and Saxena traveled to India to visit family, and the Decedent contracted Covid-19 and subsequently passed away on April 28, 2021.
On November 10, 2021, Plaintiffs filed a complaint against the Decedent’s estate and Saxena. They alleged undue influence by Saxena, arguing that she isolated the Decedent from Plaintiffs and influenced him to prepare a will to disinherit them. The Decedent’s estate and Saxena moved for involuntary dismissal under Rule 4:37 2(b). On February 15, 2024, the trial court granted dismissal, holding that the Plaintiffs did not meet their burden of proof to establish undue influence. On February 29, 2024, the Plaintiffs applied for an award of counsel fees and later voluntarily dismissed the remaining count of their complaint. Subsequently, the trial court denied the Plaintiffs’ applications for counsel fees.
The court first reasoned that the record firmly established that for over a decade, the Plaintiffs did not maintain a relationship with the Decedent other than sparsely limited communication through hateful emails, which made it “hardly surprising or suspicious that [the Decedent]” chose to disinherit the Plaintiffs from his will. Id. at *3.
Next, the court reasoned that the Plaintiffs did not provide any evidence to support that Saxena “exert[ed] mental or physical dominance over [the Decedent] to establish a confidential relationship showing an imbalance of power when the will was made.” Id. at *4. Instead, the record highlighted that the Decedent and Saxena were happily married, and he frequently asked Saxena to perform similar tasks for him; therefore, being the typist for their wills was not considered unusual in their relationship. Additionally, the will was executed in the presence of witnesses who testified to such facts. Therefore, the court concluded that a confidential relationship did not exist, and the Decedent was never subject to undue influence related to the drafting of the will.
Lastly, the trial court denied counsel fees was because the Plaintiffs did not establish a reasonable cause to contest the will. Awarding counsel fees would be inequitable because that would “deplete the estate or compel legatees to agree to unreasonable terms of settlement.” Id. at *4.
The Plaintiffs appealed, contending that their claim of undue influence was wrongfully dismissed because the trial judge did not afford all reasonable inferences based on the evidence presented. The Plaintiffs argued that a confidential relationship existed because the evidence showed Saxena typed all the Decedent’s emails, inputted the information in LegalZoom as the scrivener of the will, became the beneficiary of the will, and disregarded the Decedent’s health. The Plaintiffs also challenged the denial of counsel fees.
The Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s decision. The court reasoned that the Decedent and Saxena were simply partners in a marriage. There was no evidence indicating that the Decedent and Saxena “dealt with one another on unequal terms.” Id. at *6. The Plaintiffs did not show Saxena had “superior knowledge” or “over-mastering influence” over the Decedent. Id. Furthermore, the court found no evidence to support that Saxena controlled the Decedent through “coercion, unilateral action, or calculation.” Id. The evidence instead showed that the Plaintiffs lacked a meaningful relationship with the Decedent. The court concluded that Decedent “planned his estate accordingly by not including his children in the will and instead naming his grandchildren as contingent beneficiaries.” Id.
Additionally, the court agreed that the decision not to award the Plaintiffs’ counsel fees was sound.