Here’s my summary of what happened legislatively in 2018 on the elder law and guardianship front. The legislative focus this year is on preventing and/or responding to instances of elderly and vulnerable adult financial exploitation.
This is part two of …
2018 was another interesting legislative year for those of us toiling in the vineyards as trusts and estates lawyers. Here’s my summary of what happened on the probate and trust front. I’ll post a separate summary of 2018’s guardianship legislation.…
In re Amends. to Fla. Evidence Code, — So.3d —-, 2018 WL 549179 (Fla. Jan. 25, 2018)
Our general-purpose attorney-client privilege rule is found in F.S. 90.502. Historically, this rule was subject to the common law “fiduciary exception,”…
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 …
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 …
I previously reported here on the “Florida Electronic Wills Act”. The legislature passed this bill back in May over strong opposition from the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of The Florida Bar. For the public policy arguments for …
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have deployed digital tech to change the way we live, eat, and shop. And they’ve aggressively moved into crucial professional services industries like healthcare and finance. But the practice of law is one slice …
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.…
In terms of legislation, the big news for 2016 was Florida’s adoption of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which I wrote about here. But that’s not all that happened in 2016. There was also …
In 2014 the 4th DCA grappled with a tragic case I wrote about here involving a dispute between two divorced parents over the disposition of their deceased son’s cremated remains. The father hoped to split his son’s ashes 50/50 with …