Under the Florida Uniform Disposition of Community Property Rights at Death Act, married couples moving to Florida from community property jurisdictions bring their testamentary community property rights with them. This includes couples moving to Florida from any of our …
Prenuptial agreement vs. revocable trust: who wins?
Prenuptial agreements get litigated all the time in probate proceedings. The challenge in these cases (as in all inheritance litigation) is to not let yourself get caught up in your client’s wishful thinking. Just because a certain outcome seems really …
Does Florida’s post-divorce automatic revocation rule for Wills apply to fiancés?
In 1951 Florida added a provision to its Probate Code automatically cutting divorced spouses out of each others’ wills (F.S. 732.507(2)). In 1989 a similar provision was added to our Trust Code (F.S. 736.1105). And in …
Child support claim vs. creditor protected trust. Who wins?
The creditor protected trust at the center of this case is a special needs trust. This kind of trust is created for a disabled or elderly person that’s intended to supplement, but not supplant, government assistance programs (such as …
Is a surviving spouse’s community-property claim subject to the filing deadlines for probate “creditor” claims?
Florida remains the largest recipient of state-to-state migration in the US, and the top choice among retirees. A percentage of those transplants are going to be married couples that moved to Florida directly from a community property state …
Marriage, Guardianships . . . and the Power of Framing
Smith v. Smith, — So.3d —-, 2017 WL 3774702 (Fla. August 31, 2017)
How do we protect the elderly from exploitation and abuse, without sacrificing our fundamental rights as we enter old age, like the constitutionally protected right to …
2017 legislative news: Big Changes to Florida’s Elective Share Statutes
If you’re a working probate attorney, elective share claims loom large in your practice. Which means anytime the thicket of interconnected and complicated statutes making up this body of law gets changed, it’s worth paying attention to. And recently there’s …
If a “reputed” spouse is entitled to inheritance rights under Israeli law, what does she get in Florida?
Cohen v. Shushan, et al., — So.3d —-, 2017 WL 1018422 (Fla. 2d DCA March 15, 2017)
A person’s “status” as a surviving spouse triggers all sorts of valuable inheritance rights under Florida law, including entitlement to inheritance by …
Is Florida’s post-divorce automatic revocation statute for life insurance policies constitutional?
Most of us would agree that most divorced spouses don’t want their ex’s to hit the jackpot after one of them’s died because someone forgot to update his or her estate planning documents. You’d be surprised how often this happens.…
Federal Judge Rules Florida Must Add Same-Sex Spouses to Death Certificates
Birchfield v. Armstrong, No. 4:15-cv-00615-RH-CAS, —- WL —– (N.D. Fla. March 23, 2017)
Florida’s widows and widowers whose same-sex spouses died before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges declaring that state bans on same-sex marriage …