Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the Kansas T&E solo who knows the Kansas Probate Code (K.S.A. ch. 59) cold but still loses an afternoon a week hunting the current homestead posture, the KanCare estate-recovery reach, whether the Kansas bar’s latest ethics opinion changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Kansas Court of Appeals decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in Kansas 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 several weeks that I think actually matter to a Kansas 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 Kansas Legislature’s bill record, HB 2590 creates the Kansas Community Property Trust Act, letting married settlors opt into community-property treatment for assets placed in a qualifying trust, alongside Kansas UTC amendments (grantor-trust reimbursement, designated representatives). It does not make Kansas a community-property state; the default remains common-law/separate property.
For a Kansas T&E solo, this is a new arrow in the quiver: assets in a properly structured community-property trust get a full basis step-up at the first spouse’s death, not just on the decedent’s half — valuable for highly-appreciated property. But the default regime is unchanged, so don’t let a client (or a national form) assume community-property treatment without the opt-in trust actually in place. Confirm the statute before you draft it.
Kansas Legislature · HB 2590 (2025–26) · KSLEGISLATURE.GOV
This slot holds the week’s second Kansas-specific development — a bill with a verifiable committee vote on the legislature’s record, a newly-issued Kansas bar ethics opinion, a Kansas bar section notice, or a Medicaid agency bulletin. The orchestrator populates it from primary sources and the tr-cite below carries the source URL so the reader can verify before using it with a client.
[Per-state why-it-matters paragraph lands here once the headline item is populated.]
[Primary-source citation with URL]
Per the Kansas Secretary of State’s session laws, HB 2359 enacts the Kansas Uniform Guardianship, Conservatorship and Other Protective Arrangements Act (with UAGPPJA), emphasizing least-restrictive alternatives and recodifying the framework at new K.S.A. 59-30,101 et seq., effective January 1, 2026.
For a Kansas T&E solo who handles incapacity planning, this resets the petition forms, the standards, and the menu of protective arrangements you advise on — supported decision-making and limited orders now sit ahead of full guardianship in the analysis. Update your incapacity-planning intake and any guardianship templates to the new chapter before the next filing.
Kansas Secretary of State · 2025 Session Laws, Ch. 40 (HB 2359) · SOS.KS.GOV
Decisions that bind a Kansas practitioner — Kansas’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Kansas, including the U.S. 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.
A terminally ill husband and his wife created mirror revocable trusts in 2018 and split their assets between them. Weeks before his death they consolidated most of the investment accounts into his trust for tax reasons without moving comparable value back into hers. His trust gave the two children a $3,000 monthly allowance for life and left the balance of the corpus to the grandchildren; hers divided her corpus between the children. On his death the widow became trustee of both. The daughter later sued her for misappropriating trust assets, and the district court granted the widow summary judgment on limitations and standing, found no wrongful transfer, and allowed her to reimburse her attorney fees from the trust. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded with directions, holding in a syllabus by the court that: K.S.A. 58a-1005(c)(2) turns on termination of the beneficiary’s interest in the trust, not in some part of the corpus, so selling or transferring trust property — even in violation of the trust — does not start the clock while any property remains; where a claim can be read either as a time-barred tort or as a surviving breach of trust, on summary judgment the court must read it as the one that survives; and a sub-trust the instrument directs to arise at the settlor’s death comes into existence then, as a pourover disposition under K.S.A. 58a-401(1), not later when the trustee retitles property into it.
Two of these will change how you litigate and how you draft. On limitations, the trustee’s best defense in these cases has usually been that the challenged transfer happened years ago; this decision says the transfer is not the triggering event, which keeps stale-looking claims alive as long as the trust still holds something. Plead the breach-of-trust theory, not just the tort, and you get the Trust Code clock rather than Chapter 60’s. On the sub-trust point, the funding lag that plagues nearly every credit-shelter or family sub-trust is no longer fatal to its existence — the sub-trust exists from the moment of death, and the trustee’s failure to retitle or to handle the tax administration is a separate question from whether the trust is there at all. That protects beneficiaries whose sub-trust was never funded, and it puts the trustee’s administrative delay squarely in issue.
In the Matter of the Max Hacker Family Trust, No. 128,971 (Kan. Ct. App. July 24, 2026) — reversed and remanded with directions; syllabus by the court.
This week in Kansas for the T&E solo with KanCare clients: the developments from the Kansas Bar Association (Real Estate, Probate & Trust Law Section) and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment / KanCare 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.