Pennsylvania's new Power of Attorney Law - How does it affect you and your Clients?
Pennsylvania amended its Power of Attorney statute, with the most significant provisions becoming effective January 1, 2015. The statute attempted to bring clarity to some important issues related to the form and content of financial powers of attorney, and related to the liability issues faced both by agents and those who rely upon the words and deeds of agents.
This program will address how to avoid traps for the unwary created by the new statute, and confront the concerns of more advanced practitioners who regularly prepare power of attorney documents for clients. As a fiduciary litigator, Mr. Holman will highlight in particular various foreseeable litigation issues presented by the new statute, and will offer some thoughts about how you and your clients can avoid them.
Mr. Holman will also discuss a monumental September 18, 2015, ruling by the Pennsylvania Superior Court (written by Judge Lazarus, a former Philadelphia Orphans’ Court Judge now on the Superior Court). The Taylor Trust opinion will have significant impacts on estate planners; please see Mr. Holman’s blog post at:
Mr. Holman is a partner at the law firm of Smith Kane Holman, LLC, with offices in Malvern and Philadelphia. He limits his practice to fiduciary and commercial litigation. He lectures frequently for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and others on fiduciary litigation topics. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Probate and Trust Law Section, where he served previously for six years as the chair of the Section’s Orphans’ Court Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee. He also teaches a class at the Villanova Law School on probate process and practice. He has been recognized from 2013 through 2015 by the “Best Lawyers in America” (a Woodward/White, Inc. publication) in the field of fiduciary litigation.
