Your state's pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the North Carolina T&E solo who knows Chapter 28A cold but still loses an afternoon a week tracking the moving NC Medicaid pieces — and who has to plan around a state with no TOD deed and recovery that hooks the probate estate.
For licensed attorneys. This pack is general legal information and professional commentary for practicing attorneys — it is not legal advice, does not apply to any specific matter, and creates no attorney-client relationship. Verify every authority against the cited primary source before relying on it with a client. Published by Mike Moss, a Utah-admitted attorney, as an AI-enablement information product; it is not an offer of legal services and is not a representation that the author is admitted to practice in your jurisdiction.
Three developments I think actually matter to a North Carolina T&E solo. Each has a read that lands on your practice specifically — and each comes with a reachable citation so you can verify it yourself before you use it with a client.
G.S. § 108A–70.5 sets the Medicaid Estate Recovery Plan; the estate is the property available to discharge debt under G.S. § 28A–15–1 (the probate estate), with an expanded reach for long-term-care partnership-policy recipients.
Because NC has no statutory transfer-on-death deed (SB 160 died in committee), the probate-avoidance tools are the revocable trust, joint-with-survivorship, and life estate / lady-bird-style deeds — not a TOD deed. That is the structural fact a NC plan is built around.
The Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act has been introduced (S160, 2023–24) but never enacted; NC does not authorize a TOD deed for real property.
Update intake and avoid the malpractice trap of drafting a TOD deed that NC will not recognize. Reach for the funded revocable trust or a life-estate deed when the goal is to keep the home out of probate (and out of recovery reach).
Maximum CSRA is $162,660 (minimum $32,532); the single-applicant resource limit is $2,000; NC applies the $752,000 home-equity limit.
Two places this lands: community-spouse protection math and high-value-home clients. Flag the 2028 OBBBA $1,000,000 flat home-equity cap now.
42 U.S.C. § 1396p · CMS 2026 Standards (medicaid.gov)
Decisions that bind a North Carolina practitioner — the Supreme Court of North Carolina and the Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of North Carolina, and the Fourth Circuit — read for what actually changes how you draft, advise, and plan. Trusts and estates broadly, not Medicaid alone: wills and capacity, undue influence, fiduciary duty, trust construction, and estate recovery. One read, the holding, and the official cite.
Pamela West kept her property and finances strictly separate from her second husband and, in a 2012 will, left her entire estate in trust for her daughter and pointedly made “no provision” for her husband. After a stage-four cancer diagnosis in 2019 she declined sharply, and a new 2019 will emerged that benefited the husband (the Propounder). Her mother, niece, and sister — heirs under the 2012 plan — filed a caveat alleging lack of capacity, undue influence, and duress. At trial the jury found Pam did have testamentary capacity, but the trial court took undue influence and duress away from the jury on a directed verdict for the Propounder. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial on undue influence and duress. The directed-verdict standard required the court to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the caveators and give them every reasonable inference; instead, the court — after first acknowledging at the close of the caveators’ evidence that the “low bar” was met — “inexplicably reweighed” the competing evidence at the close of all the evidence. On the law, undue influence in a caveat is more than mere persuasion and is measured by the seven Andrews factors (among them the testator’s age and physical/mental weakness and her presence in and dependence on the beneficiary’s household); a caveator need not prove every factor, because undue influence is established by an aggregation of facts each of which alone may carry little weight. Crediting the caveators, at least three positive Andrews factors supplied more than a scintilla of evidence, so the issue had to go to the jury. (A judge dissented.)
Three things to carry into your files. One: capacity and undue influence are independent theories — a jury verdict that the testator was competent does not dispose of undue influence or duress, so do not treat a capacity win (or loss) as the whole caveat; each theory has its own evidence and its own path to the jury. Two: the bar to get undue influence to a jury is low. Plead and marshal the Andrews factors as a cumulative pattern rather than chasing a single “smoking gun,” and on a directed-verdict motion hold the trial court to the standard — every inference to the non-movant, no reweighing of the propounder’s contrary proof; this opinion is a clean citation for reversing a court that crosses that line. Three — for the drafter: a late-in-life will that reverses a long-settled plan (here, from excluding the spouse to benefiting him) in favor of someone in the household who is helping manage the testator’s care and money is the classic undue-influence fact pattern. Insulate it: independent counsel meeting the client alone, contemporaneous notes on volition as well as capacity, and a documented, plausible reason for the change — the file you build at signing is the file that defeats the caveat years later.
In re Will of West, No. COA25-409 (N.C. Ct. App. Apr. 15, 2026) (published) · official opinion — nccourts.gov
This week in North Carolina for the T&E solo with NC Medicaid-planning clients: what the NC State Bar, the NCBA Estate Planning & Fiduciary Law Section, and NC Medicaid (DHB) put in front of you.
The bar CLE calendar, the NC Medicaid bulletins, and the federal standards all publish on different schedules. This is that sift, already done, with the link on each item.