Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the Wisconsin T&E solo who knows Chapters 851–882 (Wisconsin’s own probate code, non-UPC) cold but still loses an afternoon a week hunting the current homestead number, the Wisconsin Medicaid / Family Care & IRIS slot posture, whether the latest State Bar of Wisconsin changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Wisconsin Court of Appeals decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin 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.
Act 60 (2025 Senate Bill 193) renumbered and amended Wis. Stat. 705.15(3) and 806.22 to clarify how a recorded transfer-on-death designation is revoked — including that a multi-owner or survivorship-marital-property designation is revoked only by all living owners — and how to obtain evidence that a decedent’s property interests have terminated.
The TOD deed stays a probate-avoidance workhorse, but Act 60 means the revocation mechanics and the survivorship-marital-property interaction now have to be drafted and explained with the new text in hand. Read 705.15 as amended before the next TOD deed goes to the register of deeds.
2025 Wis. Act 60 (2025 SB 193) · Wis. Stat. 705.15 · DOCS.LEGIS.WISCONSIN.GOV · eff. Dec. 9, 2025
DHS operations memo DMS-OPS-2026-19 sets the 2026 community-spouse income-allowance minimum allocation, shelter base amount, and dependent-family-member allowance (institutionalized-spouse asset limit at $2,000); the current dollar figures are published in P-10063 (01/2026).
These numbers reset annually, so a spend-down plan or community-spouse allocation built on last year’s figures will be off. Pull the exact 2026 amounts from the DMS memo and P-10063 before you quote a community-spouse allowance — don’t restate prior-year numbers from memory.
Wis. DHS Operations Memo DMS-OPS-2026-19 · DHS.WISCONSIN.GOV · eff. July 1, 2026
Act 115 (2025 Assembly Bill 598), date of enactment March 20, 2026, date of publication March 21, 2026, reworks Wis. Stat. § 50.06 and creates a defined “patient’s representative” at § 50.06(1)(d). New § 50.06(5)(am) gives that representative authority, for the incapacitated individual, to make health care decisions “to the same extent as a guardian of the person may,” to enroll the individual in the Medical Assistance program “to the same extent as a guardian of the estate may,” and to authorize health-care expenditures on the same footing. New § 50.06(8)(a) is the mechanism: a patient’s representative may consent to an admission under § 50.06(2) without a petition for guardianship or protective placement being filed, provided (1) the incapacitated individual is admitted directly from a hospital inpatient unit, and (2) the representative signs a declaration under oath and promptly submits it to the discharging hospital, the accepting facility, the adult-at-risk agency for the county of residence, every family member who can reasonably be contacted, and the register in probate for that county, for filing. The declaration must acknowledge the § 50.06(5)(am) authority and agree to exercise it, and must state that to the representative’s best knowledge the individual has no health care agent under § 155.01(4) and no guardian of the person under § 54.01(12), and that the representative does not have an activated power of attorney for health care and has not been adjudicated incompetent. The act also creates §§ 54.36(1m), 54.50(3)(cm), 851.72(1m), 146.904 and 146.82(2)(a)7m., and carries separate hospital price-transparency provisions.
This is Wisconsin’s answer to the emergency guardianship nobody wanted to file. Where a client is being discharged from a hospital into a facility without capacity and without a health care power of attorney, the old road was a petition; the new road is a sworn declaration and a filing with the register in probate. Two consequences for your practice. First, it is a narrow door and not a general substitute for planning: the admission has to come directly from a hospital inpatient unit, and the declaration route is open only where there is no health care agent and no guardian of the person — which is one more concrete reason to get a chapter 155 health care power of attorney signed while capacity is intact, because an executed POA takes your client out of this track altogether. Second, read the Medicaid half closely: § 50.06(5)(am) reaches Medical Assistance enrollment and health-care expenditures at guardian-of-the-estate level, so someone acting under a declaration is making decisions with real eligibility consequences and no court supervision. Confirm the declaration’s full contents against the act text before you advise a family to use it.
2025 Wis. Act 115 (2025 AB 598), creating Wis. Stat. §§ 50.06(1)(d), 50.06(5)(am) and 50.06(8); enacted Mar. 20, 2026, published Mar. 21, 2026 · DOCS.LEGIS.WISCONSIN.GOV · 2025 Act 115
Decisions that bind a Wisconsin practitioner — Wisconsin’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Wisconsin, including the U.S. Seventh 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 disabled Medicaid recipient challenged county final billing notices for room-and-board contributions in a community support program. The court affirmed that final notices are not an “order to compel payment” under Wis. Stat. §46.10(4)(a), so no contested-case appeal lay — but held, as guidance, that a county-issued order to compel payment would be the functional equivalent of a Department order via the §46.10(16) delegation, opening administrative review.
When a county program bills your client, the appeal door hinges on the paper’s label — demand a formal order to compel payment before conceding no hearing right exists, and cite Stewart’s functional-equivalence guidance when the county claims its own orders are unreviewable.
Stewart v. Wisconsin DHS, No. 2025AP805, 2026 Wisc. App. LEXIS 697 (Wis. Ct. App. Dist. IV June 18, 2026) (published) · WICOURTS.GOV · official opinion
This lane reads each new opinion from Wisconsin’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Wisconsin (Seventh Circuit) before anything 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. For this period’s trailing window, no new verified trusts-and-estates or estate-recovery decision from those courts was identified in the sources reviewed.
Nothing to re-paper from the bench this period; controlling authority is unchanged. When the next verified T&E ruling issues, it lands here with the holding and the official cite.
Controlling authority unchanged · Wisconsin appellate courts · U.S. Seventh Circuit.
This week in Wisconsin for the T&E solo with Wisconsin Medicaid clients: the developments from the State Bar of Wisconsin (Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section) and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services 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.