of experience since the prior update, incorporating the legal and medical communities’ knowledge and understanding of how advance directives are made and used.
Uniform Law Commission RPTE Projects
Drafting Committees:
Newly-Approved Acts:
Conflict of Laws in Trusts and Estates. This drafting committee will attempt to clarify and resolve the many conflicts of existing state laws governing trusts and estates. The project will likely modernize the law by removing the distinction between real and personal property for purposes of administration, de-emphasizing the distinction between testamentary and inter vivos trusts, and streamlining the process of determining which laws apply to matters of construction and interpretation of wills and trusts. The drafting committee is collaborating with the American Law Institute reporters who are drafting the Restatement (Third) of Conflict of Laws. The committee’s current draft is available online, and drafting will continue over the coming years. The earliest possible approval of a new uniform act on this topic will be in summer 2025.
Revisions to the Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act. This act governs living wills and powers of attorney for health care, and reflects societal and technological changes that have occurred since it was last updated in 1993. The updates to the act, now available for enactment in all states and jurisdictions, reflect the increased prevalence of non-traditional family relationships and living arrangements, an increase in the use of electronic documents, a growing use of distinct directives for mental health care, and other developments in the way healthcare is administered. Additionally, the act builds upon 30 years
Redaction of Personal Information from Public Records. In 2020, a New Jersey federal judge’s husband and son were shot at their front door by a disgruntled former litigant who targeted the judge’s family by getting her home address from public records. In the wake of this horrific act of violence, states have begun to pass legislation allowing personal information of judges and other public officials to be redacted from public records. The drafting committee aims to address the inconsistency that has appeared amongst these state laws and create one uniform procedure for redaction.
Winter 2023 Update By Jane Sternecky1 Below is a summary of Uniform Law Commission projects that may be of interest to members of the ABA Section on Real Property, Trust and Estate Law. Trust and Estates
Published in eReport, Fall 2023 / Winter 2024 © 2023-2024 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
FALL / WINTER 2024
16
eReport
