Minnesota attorneys should be aware of new probate and trust law legislation recently signed into law. I have listed the highlights of the new laws on a guest post over at the Practice Law Blawg.

Additionally, in the post, I’ve listed 5 ways you can prepare for the most important (and potentially controversial) provisions of the new laws– those redefining the scope of parent-child relationships.

As an aside: the MSBA’s Practice Blawg frequently has posts of interest even to out-of-state attorneys. Make sure you check out this blog and consider adding it to your blog reader.

I recently gave a presentation at Bethlehem Baptist Church on estate planning issues for seniors. The slideshare presentation linked below is a version of the slides I created and used. I’m providing them here in case someone finds it helpful in creating their own estate planning presentation.

As you can see by flipping through the slides, I adopted a minimalist design, trying to use as few bullet points as possible. There is almost nothing worse than a presenter who merely reads bullet points off of the screen during a presentation. Instead, I think the speaker should carry the content of the presentation– not the slides– so you won’t find much content on the slides themselves. You’ll have to fill in the content a bit to make the slides make sense. The slides act more as visual placeholders to guide the listener. At the end of the presentation, I provided everyone a booklet on estate planning as a take-away.

Note: Some of the formatting didn’t convert to slideshare very well, so things are a bit off.

Slideshare link: Sample Estate Planning Presentation

August 25th marked the one year anniversary of the Minnesota Estate Law blog.

During this time, I’ve covered issues such as abandoned ashes, nonexoneration, lost wills, what never to leave off the final account, rules for probate bonds, what you can expect if there is real estate in your probate, the new case lessons series, and many other issues.

In case you missed any of the posts, here are the 5 most popular posts of this past year:

1. Small is Now Bigger, But Dangers Abound: Changes to Affidavit for Collection of Personal Property
2. Highlights of the 2009 Probate & Trust Law Conference
3. Get Date of Death Values for Stocks the Easy Way
4. Map of State Estate Tax Thresholds
5. Five Things a Personal Representative Should Never Do

And here are a few honorable mentions:

1. Alternate Valuation in a Down Economy
2. Keeping Values of Probate Assets Private
3. The Top 5 Must-Have Resources for Minnesota Probate Attorneys
4. Transfer on Death Deed Article
5. Check Probate Filings the Easy Way

There is a lot more on the website, so look around.

What’s ahead? In the near future, I plan on featuring a new look for the blog with increased interactivity for probate attorneys and a comprehensive review of the best probate forms systems available (MinnCLE’s CLEPro vs. MSBA’s mndocs).

If you aren’t yet a subscriber, now is a good time. Visit the blog and enter your email address in the sidebar. I never spam, never give away your email address to anyone, and you can unsubscribe easily and at anytime.

This summer the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws convened to finalize 2008 amendments to the Uniform Probate Code for recommendation to the states. You can view the 2008 approved amendments (red-line version) by clicking here.

It will be interesting to see whether Minnesota’s legislature adopts any of the new amendments. I’ve heard rumblings that “change is on the way” for parts of Minnesota’s probate code, but I don’t know anything specific. I would think that first up for change would be adjusting some of the amounts listed in the statutes for inflation.

One of the most interesting amendments to the UPC is that a will could either be signed by two witnesses or notarized. The comments to that amendment cite reduction in “confusion and chance for error” if all estate planning documents (e.g., power of attorney, health care directives) were executed with similar formalities. The comments also state that lay people often mistakenly assume that a notarized (but not witnessed) will is valid anyway.

Let me be clear that I’m speaking of the UPC here, not Minnesota’s version. No changes like this have been made to the Minnesota statutes– Minnesota still requires two witnesses. I hope that Minnesota does not end up adopting the notarized will amendments. Challenges to the testamentary capacity of the testator would certainly increase. It would be exchanging reduction in “confusion and chance for error” for increased litigation.

When you read through Minnesota’s statutes on probate, it is amazing what you find. In the past month, I’ve found three errors– statutes that refer to non-existent statutes.

Here’s the list:

• 524.3-303 and 308 refer to clause 19 of 524.1-201. There is no clause 19. Presumably the reference should be clause 24.
• 524.3-413 refers to 525.02. The latter statute was repealed in 2006.