Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the Rhode Island T&E solo who knows its own probate code (R.I. Gen. Laws Title 33), run through the municipal probate courts (Rhode Island has not adopted the UPC) cold but still loses an afternoon a week hunting the current homestead number, the Medicaid Long-Term Services and Supports (EOHHS) slot posture, whether the latest Rhode Island Supreme Court opinion changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Rhode Island Supreme Court decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island 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.
The RI Division of Taxation (ADV 2025-27, Dec. 30, 2025) set the 2026 estate-tax credit at $87,940, exempting the first $1,838,056 of an estate (up from $1,802,431 in 2025). This CPI-indexed, roughly $1.8 million threshold sits at about one-fifth of the federal exemption.
A Rhode Islander with a paid-off home, a 401(k), and life insurance can owe state estate tax while owing nothing federally. For an RI T&E solo, that pulls ordinary middle-class homeowners into estate-tax planning — credit-shelter and marital-deduction structuring — far earlier than the federal number would suggest. Re-check the threshold annually; it moves with CPI.
R.I. Div. of Taxation ADV 2025-27 (Dec. 30, 2025) · tax.ri.gov
Building on Chief Justice Suttell’s Executive Order 2024-03 (creating the Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Courts), the RI Supreme Court adopted advisory generative-AI guidance and amended Article V, Rule 1.1 (competence) to cover the benefits and risks of technology, requiring lawyers to verify AI output and citations before filing.
Rhode Island’s AI authority is a Supreme Court / Judiciary product, not a Bar Association ethics opinion — the Bar’s Ethics Advisory Panel has issued no AI-specific opinion as of mid-2026. For an RI solo using AI in estate or probate drafting, treat the Rule 1.1 amendment plus the existing RPCs (1.6, 3.3, 5.3) and ABA Formal Op. 512 as the operative standard, and verify every AI-produced authority.
R.I. Supreme Court, Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Courts (Oct. 22, 2024); Art. V, Rule 1.1 · courts.ri.gov
On June 13, 2025, Gov. McKee signed RIBA-backed legislation (now R.I. Gen. Laws § 18-1-5) confirming that communications between an attorney and a client acting as trustee or other fiduciary are privileged to the same extent as in an individual capacity — superseding the Metcalfe v. Dempze fiduciary-exception ruling.
For an RI T&E solo who represents trustees and executors, this is a meaningful shift: a beneficiary can no longer reach your fiduciary-client communications by invoking the fiduciary exception. It changes how you advise trustees about candor with you and how you defend privilege if a beneficiary later sues — the protection now tracks the individual-capacity rule.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 18-1-5 (signed June 13, 2025) · governor.ri.gov
Decisions that bind a Rhode Island practitioner — Rhode Island’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Rhode Island, including the U.S. First 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.
A testator’s will let his two co-executor children sell estate assets without probate-court approval, provided they first notified the seven children of an option to purchase. One co-executor, William, bought the estate’s principal asset — the family home — for himself: he set a $260,000 price, obtained a mortgage, took a $17,192 advance against his beneficiary share, and reduced the price for repair credits, all before any accounting and without probate-court approval or adequate notice to the other devisees. The probate court voided the sale, the Superior Court affirmed, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed again, rejecting the co-executors’ laches defense: the other beneficiaries had no real chance to object until the sale was already complete.
For Rhode Island fiduciaries, a will clause permitting sales ‘without probate approval’ does not license a self-dealing executor to set his own price and buy estate property out from under the other beneficiaries. Where a co-executor purchases estate real estate — especially at a repair-discounted price — G.L. § 33-19-9 contemplates probate-court approval to fix a minimum price, and the other beneficiaries must get genuine notice and a meaningful opportunity to object before the deal closes. Self-purchase plus thin notice equals a voided sale.
Fairhurst v. Fairhurst, No. 2024-329-Appeal (R.I. May 28, 2026) — Rhode Island Supreme Court opinion.
This slot holds the next significant trusts-and-estates or estate-recovery decision from Rhode Island’s appellate courts or the federal courts covering Rhode Island. 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 Rhode Island for the T&E solo with Rhode Island Medicaid clients: the developments from the Rhode Island Bar Association and RI EOHHS (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.