NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A3536
SPONSOR: Santabarbara TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the surrogate's court procedure act, in relation to
eliminating certain will filing fees
PURPOSE:
To eliminate will filing fees in surrogate's court.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1 removes the $45.00 will filing fee in surrogate's court.
Section 2 is the effective date.
JUSTIFICATION:
New York has the largest concentration of attorneys in the United
States, with 179,600 registered attorneys, and 155,369 of those attor-
neys have addresses in the state. However, despite having 17% of the
population and 80% of the land space in the state, there are only 6,176
attorneys serving in the large swaths of rural New York, according to
attorney-registration data. In reality, the number of rural attorneys
that actually offer legal services to individual members of the public
is much smaller than that statistic indicates, since a sizable propor-
tion of these attorneys do not offer legal services to the general
public, such as district attorneys and members of the judiciary. This is
corroborated by data from rural county bars.
One of the main factors that makes practice in rural New York difficult
is that many clients are indigent, meaning they cannot afford standard
hourly rates of most attorneys. As a result of the financial hardships
many rural New York residents face, they have increasingly turned away
from standard estate planning. This has become problematic, especially
as rural New Yorkers are getting older, requiring greater resources for
the courts to process intestacies.
By removing the barrier of a filing fee, solo practitioners who handle
large numbers of will filings for their clients will be able to keep
their rates down, and will benefit estates by encouraging the best prac-
tice of filing wills. Due to the financial hardships faced by many rural
New Yorkers, and the amount of pro bono or low bono work that many rural
attorneys do, the filing fee is an unnecessary barrier and is cost-pro-
hibitive to many New Yorkers.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2021-22: A6444 - referred to judiciary
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
No cost to the state.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
The ninetieth day after it shall have become a law.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
3536
2023-2024 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
February 3, 2023
___________
Introduced by M. of A. SANTABARBARA -- read once and referred to the
Committee on Judiciary
AN ACT to amend the surrogate's court procedure act, in relation to
eliminating certain will filing fees
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Subdivision 9 of section 2402 of the surrogate's court
2 procedure act, as amended by section 30 of part J of chapter 62 of the
3 laws of 2003, is amended to read as follows:
4 9. For filing:
5 Fee Rate
6 (i) a demand for trial by jury in any proceeding, SCPA
7 502 .................................................... $150.00
8 (ii) objections to the probate of a will SCPA 1410 ............ 150.00
9 (iii) a note of issue in any proceeding ........................ 45.00
10 (iv) objection or answer in any action or proceeding
11 other than probate ..................................... 75.00
12 (v) [a will for safekeeping pursuant to section 2507 of
13 this act except that the court in any county may
14 reduce or dispense with such fee ....................... 45.00
15 (vi)] a bond, including any additional bond:
16 less than $10,000 ...................................... 20.00
17 $10,000 and over ....................................... 30.00
18 § 2. This act shall take effect on the ninetieth day after it shall
19 have become a law.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD00475-01-3
