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If the will writer was killed, their murderer is automatically disinherited. The heir just has to prove they did it, setting up a [[Murder Mystery]]. Forgery and tampering are subtler crimes, so are usually left to the more cerebral mysteries.
A marriage or divorce which took place after the will was drafted may invalidate it; conversely "separated" is still technically "married", an annoying legal pitfall for inheritances.
If the villain simply had undue influence on the will writer, such as a [[Black Widow]], or if the will is unreasonable, the only option is to take it to court. Many of the [[On One Condition|more bizarre conditions]] would be thrown out if they were challenged, but these cases are notoriously slow, so are seldom the main focus of a plot.
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* ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'' has [[McGuffin|Marvin Acme's will]], which was hidden. ([[Hidden in Plain Sight|In plain sight]], as a matter of fact.)
* ''Greedy'' is pretty much entirely about the second and third paragraphs under ''Writing the Will'', above.
* ''The Ultimate Gift'' uses a will at the beginning of the film to set up the story. The protagonist has to perform the convoluted tasks set forth in the will in order to inherit billions.
* ''[[Dark and Stormy Night]]'' plays this to the hilt as the set piece. Complete with and [[Old Dark House]].
* ''[[All of Me]]'' has [[Bunny Ears Lawyer|the main character's lawyer]] suggesting in no uncertain terms that the will may be challenged "if you are not of sound mind" after an abrupt, unexpected change leaves everything inexplicably to one person.
* [[The Film of the Book|The film adaptation]] of ''[[The Borrowers]]'' involves an unscrupulous lawyer claiming that the deceased in question never wrote a proper will, thus making him the sole beneficiary of her estate including the house that her niece's family — the film's protagonists — are currently living in. In reality, she had an extra copy hidden in the walls of the house itself because [[Properly Paranoid|she never did trust lawyers]].
* ''[[Mousehunt]]'' kicks off with the protagonists' father leaving them his string factory and an old repossessed house that turns out to be (A) the work of a famous architect and (B) inhabited by the eponymous mouse.
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* In [[Shadowrun]], upon the death of the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn, his entire hoard was divided in the most ridiculously convoluted will in history, with bequests ranging from the practical to the symbolic to the absurd (including the largest bequest: over thirteen billion dollars to repay the one gold coin, "accounting for inflation and interest," that Art Dankwalther's ancestor had lent Dunkelzahn in the Fourth Age). It was so extreme that a [[Mega Corp]], the Draco Foundation, was set up just to manage the will. All of this, of course, was related to the dragon's monumental [[Gambit Roulette]] to prepare the world to defeat the [[Eldritch Abomination|Horrors]] when they showed up again.
** For the curious, the entire will (minus some in-universe legal BS), plus some out-of-game annotations, can be found [https://web.archive.org/web/20110119014130/http://ancientfiles.dumpshock.com/Dunk_Will.htm here].
*** Be warned: It's '''''long''''' -- 'Print Preview' in Firefox shows ''62'' pages.
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