Estate of Gaspar v. Vogt, Brown & Merry

KONENKAMP, Justice.

[¶ 1.] In preparing wills for a husband and wife who wished to disinherit each other so that their children by previous marriages would receive their estates, the attorney failed to advise that waivers of their respective spousal elective shares would be necessary to accomplish their testamentary wishes. After the wife died, the husband obtained his elective share of half the wife’s estate. The wife’s estate then brought a legal malpractice action against the attorney. In finding against the attorney, the circuit court ruled in a bench trial that the loss to the wife’s…