Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the New Jersey T&E solo who knows Title 3B (New Jersey’s modified Uniform Probate Code) cold but still loses an afternoon a week tracking the inheritance-tax waiver rules, the NJ FamilyCare / MLTSS (DMAHS) eligibility posture, whether the latest New Jersey bar ethics opinion changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in New Jersey lately — the week’s developments and the recent rulings from the bench.
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 from the last seven days that I think actually matter to a New Jersey T&E solo. Each one has a read that lands on your practice specifically — and each one comes with the citation so you can verify the detail yourself before you use it with a client.
Per the NJ Division of Taxation, the readopted Transfer Inheritance and Estate Tax regulations extend waiver requirements to brokerage and non-bank financial accounts and eliminate the prior 10-day waiting period for waivers. New Jersey repealed its estate tax for deaths on/after Jan. 1, 2018 but still imposes the Inheritance Tax keyed to the beneficiary’s relationship class (Class A exempt; Class C and D taxed).
For a New Jersey solo, executors now need waivers to release brokerage and non-bank financial accounts that previously moved more freely — build the broadened waiver step into your administration checklist before a fiduciary tries to retitle an account. And because the tax falls on who inherits rather than how much the estate holds, equal nominal shares to a child (Class A, exempt) and a niece (Class D, taxed) quietly produce unequal after-tax results worth modeling at the drafting stage.
N.J. Division of Taxation · Transfer Inheritance and Estate Tax (N.J.A.C. 18:26, readopted eff. Dec. 15, 2025) · nj.gov/treasury/taxation/inheritance-estate
Per the New Jersey Legislature, bills to adopt the URPTODA (which would for the first time permit transfer-on-death deeds for NJ real property) remain before the Legislature in 2026 (S3679; A1819), so current law is unchanged. New Jersey’s transfer-on-death / beneficiary registration is available only for securities under the Uniform TOD Security Registration Act, not for real-property deeds.
Don’t let a client — or an out-of-state form vendor — assume a beneficiary deed will keep the New Jersey home out of probate; it will not. Probate avoidance for the residence here runs through revocable trusts, joint ownership with survivorship, and tenancy by the entirety between spouses, which carries real creditor-protection weight in a state with no homestead exemption. Re-file the TOD-deed question for a later session.
N.J. Legislature · S3679 (2026 Sess.) · pub.njleg.state.nj.us/Bills/2026/S4000/3679_I1.PDF
Per the official Supreme Court notice, the Court’s preliminary AI guidelines continue to govern attorney use of generative AI, imposing duties to verify AI output and preserve confidentiality under RPCs 3.1, 4.1, 5.3, and 8.4. (The njcourts.gov AI landing page is JS-gated; the substance is verified via the Jan. 25, 2024 notice PDF itself.)
If you use AI-assisted drafting in a New Jersey T&E practice, this notice is the document your conduct is measured against: independently verify every machine-produced citation before it leaves your office, and treat any client data entering an AI tool as a confidentiality question first. It is also a useful checklist when an out-of-state vendor pitches an “AI estate-plan” product.
N.J. Supreme Court · Notice on Preliminary Guidelines on the Use of AI (Jan. 25, 2024) · njcourts.gov · n240125a.pdf
Decisions that bind a New Jersey practitioner — New Jersey’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering New Jersey, including the U.S. Third 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.
An estate-planning attorney admitted two errors in preparing two elderly brothers’ 2018 wills — misreading their prior 2003 wills and conveying only personal property, not the whole estate, to the surviving brother. A niece (Helen) who would have inherited under the 2003 wills, with her mother, sued for malpractice as intended beneficiaries. The New Jersey Supreme Court formally adopted Section 51 of the Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers as the test for when a lawyer owes a duty of care to a non-client, and held the attorney owed Helen no duty: under § 51(2) she was neither invited to rely on nor relied on his advice, and under § 51(3)(a) no reasonable jury could find clear-and-convincing evidence that the testators intended the 2018 wills to benefit her. The Court also confirmed (Illustration 4) that a purported heir cannot sue the drafting lawyer for negligently letting an allegedly incompetent client execute a will.
This is now New Jersey’s controlling malpractice framework for estate planners. A disappointed would-be beneficiary can reach the drafting attorney only with clear-and-convincing evidence that the testator communicated an intent to benefit them that does not appear on the will’s face — vague notes such as ‘Helen $___’ will not do — and an heir cannot sue you for assisting a client whose competence is later questioned. The lesson cuts both ways: document the testator’s intent and your capacity assessment contemporaneously, because that record is what defeats — or, if sloppy, invites — a beneficiary’s claim.
Christakos v. Boyadjis, No. A-42 September Term 2024 (090214) (N.J. Jan. 20, 2026) — New Jersey Supreme Court opinion (njcourts.gov).
This slot holds the next significant trusts-and-estates or estate-recovery decision from New Jersey’s appellate courts or the federal courts covering New Jersey. The lane reads each opinion before it lands here, and reads-and-discards matters that aren’t trusts-and-estates — criminal, family, commercial/LLC fiduciary, tax, and cases where an estate or trust is only a party. When the trailing window has no further ruling, this row says so plainly rather than inventing one.
Nothing further to re-paper from the bench this period; controlling authority is otherwise unchanged.
This week in New Jersey for the T&E solo with NJ FamilyCare / Medicaid clients: the developments from the New Jersey State Bar Association and DMAHS (NJ Medicaid) that actually moved your practice this period — each one primary-source verified.
Bar and Medicaid changes land on different schedules and aren’t indexed by practice focus. Every item here was checked against its primary source, with the link, so you can verify before relying on it.