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A03536 Summary:

BILL NOA03536
 
SAME ASSAME AS S02718
 
SPONSORSantabarbara
 
COSPNSR
 
MLTSPNSR
 
Amd §2402, SCPA
 
Eliminates filing fees for wills filed for safekeeping in the surrogate's court.
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A03536 Memo:

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.
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A03536 Text:



 
                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
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