Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the Utah T&E solo who knows the UPC (Title 75) cold but still loses an afternoon a week hunting the current homestead number, the New Choices Waiver waiver posture, whether the latest EAOC opinion changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Utah Court of Appeals decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in Utah 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 Utah 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 DHHS New Choices Waiver fact sheet, the program "serves a limited number of individuals" and "the majority of available waiver slots are reserved for people residing in nursing facilities, hospitals, or other medical facilities." Applicants may apply "until the waiver participant cap is met." This is the structural posture, not a weekly event — and it governs how you order a Medicaid plan around NCW eligibility.
For a Utah solo, the planning implication is timing and setting, not just eligibility math. A client already at home, already on another Utah waiver, or not yet institutionalized is competing for the minority share of slots against a prioritized queue. If a client's plan is "wait until they need it," the slot may not be there the week they need it. The practical posture is scenario-planning two paths — NCW availability and a fallback without it — before the facility decision forces your hand.
Utah DHHS New Choices Waiver Fact Sheet · medicaid.utah.gov/ltc-2/nc/
HB 181 (2026 General Session) enacts the Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act, giving Utah a statutory framework for electronic non-testamentary estate-planning instruments. It defines ‘electronic,’ ‘electronic record,’ and ‘electronic signature’ for estate planning and confirms that documents such as trust instruments, powers of attorney, and advance health-care directives may be created, signed, and validly executed in electronic form. Utah also recodified its fiduciary and trust statutes this session into new Title 75A (Fiduciaries) and Title 75B (Trusts), moved out of the Title 75 Uniform Probate Code.
For a Utah solo this is a workflow change, not just a doctrinal one. You can build a fully electronic signing process for the non-testamentary side of a plan — revocable trusts, POAs, health-care directives — but confirm the Act’s execution and notarization requirements before you retire wet-ink signing, and remember wills remain governed by their own execution statute (this Act is the non-testamentary track). Update your citations too: fiduciary and trust provisions now live in Titles 75A and 75B, so a memo pointing at old Title 75 sections may cite a moved statute.
Utah HB 181 (2026 Gen. Sess.), Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act · le.utah.gov · HB 181
Under Utah Code § 78B-5-503(6), the Office of the State Auditor — not the Judicial Council, not DHHS — computes the homestead adjustment using the CPI formula in the statute and publishes the new figures no later than January 1 of the applicable calendar year. The 2026 figures took effect January 1. The 2025 amount on bar-association forms and most CLE slide decks circulating in the first quarter is stale.
Two places this bites immediately: creditor-exemption schedules filed in Utah bankruptcy cases, and the homestead-allowance math in § 75-2-402 family-protection claims. If your forms library was refreshed before the adjustment, every pleading out of it this year is citing last year's number. The fix is fifteen minutes in the template — but only if someone noticed.
Utah Code § 78B-5-503(6) · Office of the State Auditor · auditor.utah.gov · effective Jan 1, 2026
Decisions from the courts that bind a Utah practitioner — the Utah Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Court for Utah, and the Tenth 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.
Five siblings fought over a family trust. At 96 and recovering from a fall, the settlor signed a “Final Trust” dividing the property equally among her children — undoing an earlier amendment that had given one son the whole parcel. The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed for the trustee on every point: the settlor had testamentary capacity; although a confidential relationship existed between her and the trustee-daughter who benefited, the daughter rebutted the presumption of undue influence; and a no-contest (in terrorem) provision the settlor never requested — and that was never read to her — was properly reformed out of the trust.
Three things to carry into your files. One: when a beneficiary in a confidential relationship helps procure an amendment, expect the undue-influence presumption — and build the rebuttal the way the prevailing trustee did here (the settlor initiates the change, the terms are read aloud, the record shows independent will). Two: a no-contest clause sticks only if it reflects the settlor’s actual intent — here it was excised because she never asked for it and it was never read to her, so paper the settlor’s specific instruction to include one. Three: preserve the record — the appellant’s missing transcripts let the court “presume regularity” and sank his arguments on appeal.
Brown v. Amidan, 2025 UT App 144 (Utah Ct. App. Oct. 9, 2025) · official opinion — utcourts.gov
This slot holds the next significant trusts-and-estates or estate-recovery decision from Utah’s appellate courts or the federal courts covering Utah. The lane reads each opinion before it lands here, and reads-and-discards Medicaid program/provider litigation as not T&E. When the trailing window has no new ruling, this row says so plainly rather than inventing one.
[Per-state “what this means today” paragraph lands here once a ruling is populated — otherwise: nothing to re-paper from the bench this period; controlling authority unchanged.]
This week in Utah for the T&E solo with Aging / New Choices clients: the Utah state bar and Utah Medicaid developments 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.