In April 2005, Grace Peterson, a spinster then aged seventy-four, asked Chester Gustafson, a Minneapolis attorney, to draw a will for her. Gustafson, who had also probated Peterson's sister's estate, drew this first will and six subsequent wills and codicils free of charge because he claimed that she had no money to pay for his services.
Over the five-year period during which Gustafson redrew Peterson's will, an increasing amount of property was devised to Gustafson's children, until, finally, the seventh will so devised Peterson's entire estate. Peterson, however, hardly knew the children except from several chance encounters ten years before.
She died on February 1, 2010, without ever having changed the seventh will, and Gustafson, who was named as executor, now seeks to have the will admitted to probate. Discuss whether the seventh will should be probated.