Erie Orphans’ Court Rule 5.6, for the emergency appointment of a guardian of the estate or person of a minor, has been rescinded, effective thirty days after publication in the Pa. Bulletin. “Order Rescinding Erie O.C.R. 5.6; Doc. No. 2026-00042” (3/2/2026), 56 Pa.B. 1419 (3/14/2026).
The decedent’s will appointed one of the decedent’s children as executor and directed that, if there was any dispute as to any property, the executor had the power to divide the assets of the estate among the children in the executor’s sole judgment, but that power was not significant enough to constitute a “substantial benefit” in a challenge to the validity of the will for undue influence. In re: Constance Ruggere, Deceased, 769 MDA 2025 (Pa. Super. 3/10/2026) (non-precedential).
Westmoreland County’s website now includes a statement that “Pursuant to Court Administrative Order, all filings must an include an affidavit regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence,” and the “Forms” page now includes a form for use in the Court of Common Pleas, including the Orphans’ Court. This was apparently posted March 5, 2026.
This appears to be the second county in Pennsylvania that will require an affidavit as to the use of generative AI in filings. (Butler County adopted a similar procedure in 2024. See “Problems with Chatbots” for additional information about court filings prepared using AI.)
However, there is no record of Westmoreland County having published this administrative order in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, and publication would seem to be necessary for this order to be effective because it is within the definition of (and has the effect of) a “local rule.” See Pa. R.J.A. 103(c), 201 Pa. Code Rule 103, “Procedure for adopting, filing, and publishing rules.”
The Department of the Treasury has announced that the effective date for final regulations proposed in 2024 (published at 89 FR 58644) to implement the changes to required minimum distributions rules made by to conform to SECURE Act 2.0 of 2022 will be for the calendar year that begins no earlier than six months after the final regulations are published. Until then, taxpayers must continue to apply a reasonable, good-faith interpretation of the statutory provisions underlying the regulations. Announcement 2026-7 (2/23/2026), 2026-11 I.R.B. ____ (3/9/2026).
The decedent’s wife (who had elected against the will) received no notice of a petition by residuary beneficiaries to remove the executor and compel an accounting, but her counsel received a copy of the executor’s answer to the petition. After a hearing at which the wife did not appear, the Orphans’ Court sua sponte nullified a deed by which the executor had conveyed the decedent’s residence to the wife, and later entered an order removing the executor. On appeal by wife and the executor, the Superior Court found that any lack of personal jurisdiction over the wife had been waived because objections were not raised during the proceedings in the lower court or by exceptions, that the Orphans’ Court had the power to protect the assets of the estate on its own motion, and that the wife was not an indispensible party to the removal proceeding or to the ancillary relief restoring the residence to the estate. In re: Estate of Dominic J. Forte, Deceased, ___ A.4th ___, 2026 PA Super 16 (1/30/2026).
The Orphans’ Court abused its discretion and erred as a matter of law when it disregarded the testimony of two expert witnesses that the person previously adjudicated to be incapacitated was no longer incapacitated, and relied solely on evidence of past financial irresponsibility, in refusing to terminate the guardianship as requested by the incapacitated person because the proponent of the guardianship did not meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence of continuing incapacity. In re: M.E., an Incapacitated Person, ___ A.4th ___, 2026 PA Super 30 (2/19/2026).
The denial of various objections to the executor’s account should be affirmed on appeal:
- The failure of the objectant to seek discovery before trial, and the resulting failure to provide evidence to support the objections to the account, cannot be excused by alleging that the accountant breached a fiduciary duty to make full disclosures to the beneficiaries.
- The previous refusal to disqualify accountant’s counsel was not appealed, and is now res judicata.
- The “accountant” is the fiduciary presenting an account and is not required to be a lawyer, and neither the accountant nor his counsel owed any duty to the beneficiaries while defending the account against objections.
- The court’s finding that the sale price obtained for an estate property was reasonable was supported by testimony from a realtor and an appraiser, and the objectant’s appeal should be dismissed for failing to identify the evidence in the record claimed to be contrary to the court’s findings.
- The original objection was that the accountant should be surcharged for the delay in terminating the decedent’s car lease, but the issue presented on appeal is that the accountant failed to produce the lease agreement, but there was sufficient testimony on the amount of the lease termination fee.
- Although the accountant paid the claim of the nursing home for room and board, the nursing home later refunded the payment so the objection to the payment is moot.
- Objections to the payment of relatively small claims by medical providers were properly dismissed when the objectants failed to present any evidence that the claims would have been covered by insurance, and the payments are not a “significant discrepancy” requiring an explanation by the accountant.
- An objection to the payment of inheritance tax on “assets not subject” to tax was properly dismissed in the absence of any evidence as to what assets were not taxable, and the objectants cannot claim on appeal that inheritance tax was underpaid because of a “taxable distribution” made from the decedent’s checking account three months before death.
- The decedent’s gift of her business interests to her business partner did not include gifts of computers or other assets she held, or gifts of electronic records on her computer, the wiping of the hard drive of the decedent’s computer was not a breach of fiduciary duty, and the claimed business losses by the partner were not supported by sufficient evidence.
Fellman Estate, 3 Fid.Rep.4th 288 (Montgomery O.C. 2025), on app., 1587 EDA 2025 (Pa. Super.).
After decedent’s daughter was removed as executor for failing to administer the estate, including the failure to pay the mortgage and other costs of maintaining the decedent’s residence which the daughter continued to occupy, the court gave the daughter the right to purchase the residence at a price to be agreed upon with the decedent’s son as the other beneficiary of the estate. The parties failed to agree on a purchase, and the court’s order directed the daughter and her family to vacate the residence so that the son could take possession as successor executor and sell the property. Randolph Estate, 3 Fid.Rep.4th 310 (Bucks O.C. 2025).
The Orphans’ Court has mandatory jurisdiction over a challenge to the validity of a beneficiary designation to a deferred compensation plan, and so a preliminary objection to the petition was dismissed. The petition alleged that the decedent changed the beneficiary designation on-line three months before his death, when the decedent was mentally handicapped from drug addiction, the elements of undue influence, fraud, lack of capacity, or mistake could be inferred from those allegations, and so the preliminary objection to the petition for failing to state a claim was also dismissed. DelVecchio Estate, 3 Fid.Rep.4th 283 (Philadelphia O.C. 2025).
One of the few good things about the Act of July 2, 2014, P.L. 855, No. 95, which made a number of significant changes to 20 Pa.C.S. Ch. 56 (“Powers of Attorney”), is that the act provided a list of…
This content is for Subscriber members only.
Register
Register
Already a member? Log in here