The catch is timing. Every one of these tools requires the signer to have capacity at the moment they sign. Once capacity is gone, the planning window has closed, and the family is left with the court process the planning was meant to prevent.

What Guardianship Looks Like in Indiana

Indiana’s guardianship law, found in Article 29-3 of the Indiana Code, allows a court to appoint a guardian for an adult the court finds to be an incapacitated person, meaning someone unable to manage their property or care for themselves because of a condition the statute describes. The process starts with a petition, notice to family, and a hearing. If the court appoints a guardian, that guardian generally answers to the court through an inventory, periodic accountings, and sometimes prior approval for significant decisions.

None of that is improper. It exists to protect people who cannot protect themselves. It is also public, takes time, costs money, and places decisions with whoever the court selects, who may not be the person you would have chosen. Indiana also made changes to its probate and guardianship rules in 2026, which I covered in a separate post. The documents below let your own choices govern instead.

The Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Matters

A power of attorney lets you name an agent to handle financial and property matters on your behalf. Indiana’s Power of Attorney Act, at Article 30-5 of the Indiana Code, governs how these documents work. To be effective, the document must be signed and properly executed, including acknowledgment before a notary, under Indiana Code 30-5-4-1.

The word that matters for incapacity planning is durable. A durable power of attorney remains effective after you become incapacitated, which is exactly when your family needs it most. You can have it take effect immediately or only upon incapacity, depending on how the document is written and how much you want your agent to be able to do while you are still able to act yourself. A well-drafted financial power of attorney can let your agent pay bills, manage accounts, handle real estate, deal with taxes, and address the practical matters that would otherwise require a guardianship over your property.

The Health Care Representative Appointment

Financial authority does not reach medical decisions. For those, Indiana law lets you appoint a health care representative under Indiana Code 16-36-1-7. The appointment must be in writing, signed, and witnessed by an adult who is not the representative. It takes effect when you become unable to make your own health care decisions and steps aside if you regain that ability.

This is the document that lets a person you trust speak with your doctors and consent to or decline treatment when you cannot. Without it, Indiana law falls back on a priority list of relatives who may consent on your behalf, set out in Indiana Code 16-36-1-5. That list can work, and it can also place authority with someone you would not have chosen, or split it among several people who disagree at the worst possible moment. Naming your own representative removes that uncertainty.

Where a Revocable Trust Adds Protection

For families with real estate, investment accounts, or a business, a funded revocable living trust adds another layer. While you are well, you serve as your own trustee and keep full control. If you become incapacitated, the successor trustee you named takes over management of whatever the trust holds, without any court involvement, under the terms you wrote. A trust handles incapacity for the assets inside it the way a durable power of attorney handles assets outside it, and the two are meant to work together. Assets left out of both can still end up in a guardianship, which is why funding the trust and keeping the power of attorney current both matter.

Planning for incapacity is manageable once the right documents are in place, and it spares your family the expense, delay, and loss of control that come with guardianship. A short review can tell you whether your power of attorney, health care representative appointment, and any trust are current and actually cover what they need to. Attorney Burton Padove brings nearly forty years of Indiana estate planning experience to that kind of review, and Padove Law offers free, in-home consultations throughout the state. To put these protections in place, or confirm the ones you have still work, call the office at (219) 836-2200.

The post How Indiana Families Avoid Guardianship by Planning for Incapacity in Advance appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

Two groups feel the rule most directly. The first is the adult children and other non-spouse beneficiaries who will inherit these accounts. The second is Indiana families who named a revocable living trust as the beneficiary of a retirement account, often years ago, under rules that no longer apply. A trust written for the old system can now produce a result the family never intended.

What the Inherited IRA 10-Year Rule Requires Now

The SECURE Act of 2019 ended the long-standing practice of stretching inherited retirement account distributions over a beneficiary’s lifetime. In July 2024, the IRS issued final regulations (T.D. 10001) confirming how the rule works, and those regulations apply for distribution years beginning January 1, 2025.

For most non-spouse beneficiaries, a category the rules call non-eligible designated beneficiaries, the inherited account must be fully withdrawn within ten years of the original owner’s death. The final regulations kept a feature that drew heavy criticism. If the owner died on or after the age at which they had to begin taking their own required minimum distributions, the beneficiary must also take a distribution in each of years one through nine, then empty the account by the end of year ten. Where the owner died before that age, the beneficiary can take distributions in any pattern they choose, so long as the account is empty by the tenth year.

The IRS waived the penalty for missed annual distributions for 2021 through 2024 while the rules were unsettled. That relief is gone for 2025 and later years. Beneficiaries who are subject to the annual requirement need to take their distributions or face the penalty for falling short.

Who Still Gets More Time

A limited group of heirs, called eligible designated beneficiaries, can still spread distributions over a longer period. The category includes a surviving spouse, a minor child of the account owner until the child reaches age 21 (after which the ten-year clock begins), a beneficiary who is disabled or chronically ill, and a beneficiary who is not more than ten years younger than the owner. A surviving spouse has additional options, including rolling the account into their own IRA. Most other heirs, including the typical adult child, fall under the ten-year rule.

Why Naming a Trust as Beneficiary Now Needs a Second Look

Indiana families often build a revocable living trust to keep assets out of probate, then name that trust as the beneficiary of an IRA or 401(k). Whether the trust still accomplishes what the family had in mind depends on how it is drafted, and the new rules change the analysis.

For the retirement account to be measured by the people behind a trust rather than by a harsher default, the trust generally has to qualify as a see-through trust under the regulations. Two common designs sit inside that category. A conduit trust passes each distribution out to the beneficiary as it arrives. An accumulation trust can hold distributions inside the trust instead.

Under the old stretch rules, a conduit trust could release small annual amounts over a beneficiary’s lifetime. Now the entire account has to leave the IRA within ten years, so a conduit trust ends up handing the full balance to the beneficiary by the end of that period. For a young beneficiary, a beneficiary with creditor problems, or one who does not manage money well, that outcome can undo the very control the trust was meant to provide. An accumulation trust can keep the funds protected inside the trust, though trust income is taxed at compressed rates that reach the top federal bracket at a low threshold, so retained distributions can carry a heavy tax cost. Neither structure is automatically right or wrong. The point is that a trust drafted before these rules took effect may now do close to the opposite of what the family wanted.

Steps Indiana Families Should Take

Start by confirming the beneficiary designation on each retirement account directly with the custodian. That designation, not the will, controls who inherits the account. Designations made long ago are easy to forget and frequently out of date.

If a trust is named as beneficiary, have the trust language reviewed against the current rules. A conduit provision that made sense a decade ago may need to become an accumulation provision, or the better answer may be to name individuals directly. The right choice depends on who the beneficiaries are and what you are trying to protect against.

Coordinate the retirement accounts with the rest of the plan rather than treating them as an afterthought. The size of these accounts, the income tax that comes with them, and the ten-year deadline all interact with decisions about trusts, other assets, and which heirs receive what. My earlier writing on coordinating beneficiary designations and transfer-on-death arrangements explains how a single overlooked designation can pull an asset in a direction the plan never intended.

Retirement accounts reward attention to detail, and the rules that govern them have shifted under families who set their plans years ago. A focused review can tell you whether your beneficiary designations, and any trust named to receive these accounts, still match your goals under the current law. Attorney Burton Padove has spent nearly four decades helping Indiana families coordinate these pieces, and Padove Law offers free, in-home consultations across Indiana. To go over your retirement accounts and how they fit your plan, call the office at (219) 836-2200.

The post The Inherited IRA 10-Year Rule Is Now Being Enforced: What It Means for Indiana Trusts and Beneficiaries appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

The law sets out who may reach your digital assets and under what conditions. The part that surprises people is that a will or power of attorney, on its own, often is not the deciding factor. A provider’s own tools and policies can carry more weight than the documents you signed with an attorney, unless you take a specific step the statute recognizes.

How Indiana’s Digital Assets Law Works

The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, adopted in Indiana in 2016 and codified at Indiana Code Article 32-39, governs access by four kinds of fiduciaries: the personal representative of a deceased person’s estate, an agent acting under a power of attorney, a trustee, and a court-appointed guardian. The statute lets these fiduciaries request access to digital assets from the company that holds them, which the law calls the custodian.

Indiana law builds a clear order of priority for deciding access, set out in Indiana Code 32-39-2-1. At the top is an online tool. If the provider offers a feature that lets you name someone to receive or manage your account after death or incapacity, and you use it, that choice controls. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Apple’s Legacy Contact are common examples. A direction you give through one of these tools overrides instructions in your estate documents and overrides the provider’s general terms of service.

If you have not used an online tool, the next level is your estate planning documents. Directions in a will, trust, or power of attorney about disclosure of digital assets come next in priority. Only if you have done neither does the provider’s terms-of-service agreement govern, and those agreements frequently restrict or block fiduciary access.

This priority order is the practical heart of the statute. The choice you make inside an account can quietly outrank the will you spent time and money preparing. That is not a flaw to fear so much as a feature to use deliberately.

What Your Personal Representative or Agent Can Actually Reach

Indiana’s statute draws a line between the contents of your electronic communications and everything else. The contents of communications, meaning the actual text of your emails and messages, receive the strongest protection. A custodian will disclose those contents to a personal representative only when the deceased user consented, either through an online tool or in a will or other record, as provided in Indiana Code 32-39-2-4. Without that consent, the contents stay private.

Other digital assets, such as a catalogue of whom you communicated with, account balances, files, and similar information, are available on a lower showing. A custodian may disclose this broader category to a personal representative unless the user directed otherwise. The same content-versus-catalogue distinction runs through the provisions that govern an agent acting under a power of attorney.

For an agent under a power of attorney, the document matters a great deal. Authority over the content of communications must be granted expressly in the power of attorney. A general grant of authority will not reach it. This is the kind of detail that turns a routine task, paying a bill from an online account or closing a dormant subscription, into a wall the family cannot get past. Financial institutions in particular can be cautious about granting access, a pattern I have written about before in connection with bank verification and estate administration.

Steps That Keep Accounts From Locking Up

A few concrete moves make a real difference, and none of them are complicated.

Start with the online tools. Where a provider offers a legacy or inactive-account feature, use it and name the person you want. That single step sits at the top of Indiana’s priority order and resolves access for that account without any court involvement.

Next, make sure your estate planning documents speak to digital assets directly. A current will, trust, and durable power of attorney should each include language authorizing your fiduciary to access digital assets, including the content of electronic communications where you want that access granted. The statute gives your written directions real force, but only if the documents actually contain them. Many older documents predate the law entirely and say nothing on the subject.

Keep an inventory of your accounts, stored securely and apart from your passwords. A fiduciary cannot ask for access to an account no one knows exists. A simple list of providers, updated now and then, saves enormous effort later. I generally advise against writing passwords into a will, since a will becomes a public record once it is filed with the court.

Revisit all of this when your circumstances change. New accounts, a new financial institution, or a move to a different platform each give you a reason to confirm that your plan still reaches everything it should.

Digital assets are easy to overlook until a family runs into a locked account with no clear way in. A short review can confirm that your will, trust, and power of attorney are written to work with Indiana’s digital assets law rather than against it. Attorney Burton Padove brings nearly forty years of Indiana estate planning experience to that kind of review, and Padove Law offers free, in-home consultations throughout the state. To make sure the people you trust can reach what they need to, call the office at (219) 836-2200 and arrange a time to go over your plan.

The post How Indiana Law Decides Who Can Access Your Digital Assets After Death or Incapacity appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

That reality should shift where your attention goes. The real risk for most Indiana families lies elsewhere, in the parts of a plan that decide whether your wishes actually get carried out.

What the $15 Million Federal Estate Tax Exemption Actually Changed

Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the exemption had been roughly doubled, sitting at $13.99 million per person in 2025. That increase carried an expiration date. Without congressional action, the exemption was scheduled to fall back to around $5 million per person, adjusted for inflation, on January 1, 2026.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, removed that scheduled drop. It set a $15 million exemption for 2026 and provided for annual inflation adjustments beginning in 2027, using 2025 as the base year. The new figure is written into the Internal Revenue Code as the basic exclusion amount under IRC Section 2010(c)(3)(A). The estate tax rate on amounts above the exemption remains 40 percent.

“Permanent” in this context means there is no built-in sunset. A future Congress could still change the number. For now, families can plan without the pressure of a looming deadline, which is a meaningful change from the uncertainty that hung over 2025.

Indiana Has No Death Tax of Its Own

This is where the Indiana picture matters. Indiana repealed its inheritance tax for anyone who died after December 31, 2012. The repeal was signed into law in 2013 and applied retroactively to the start of that year. Indiana also has no separate state estate tax. The old Indiana estate tax was a pick-up tax tied to a federal credit that disappeared, and no Indiana estate tax has been imposed on deaths since 2004.

What that means in practice is straightforward. When an Indiana resident dies, there is no state-level tax on the transfer of their property, regardless of the size of the estate. Combine that with a $15 million federal exemption, and the overwhelming majority of Indiana estates owe no death tax at any level.

I raise this because a fair number of people still carry a worry that their children or grandchildren will face a tax bill simply for inheriting. For Indiana families under the federal threshold, that worry is misplaced. The energy spent fearing a tax that will not apply is better spent on the parts of a plan that determine whether your wishes are honored.

What Indiana Families Should Focus On Instead

If federal estate tax is off the table for your household, the value of estate planning has not shrunk. It has simply moved to where it always belonged for most families.

Probate avoidance usually comes first. Indiana probate can be time-consuming and public, and assets titled in a single name with no beneficiary designation generally pass through it. A revocable living trust, properly funded, keeps those assets out of probate. Beneficiary designations and transfer-on-death arrangements do the same for specific accounts and real estate when they are coordinated with the rest of the plan.

Incapacity planning is just as important and often overlooked. A durable financial power of attorney and a health care representative appointment let someone you trust act for you if illness or injury takes away your ability to act for yourself. Without those documents, your family may face a guardianship proceeding in court, which is exactly the kind of expense and delay sound planning is meant to prevent.

Then there is the step-up in basis, the tax issue that actually touches ordinary Indiana families. Under IRC Section 1014, most assets receive a new income tax basis equal to their fair market value at the owner’s death. An adult child who inherits appreciated property and sells it soon afterward often owes little or no capital gains tax because of that adjustment. How property is titled, and whether it sits inside certain trusts, can affect that benefit. This is a real planning concern for families who will never see a dollar of estate tax.

Blended families, minor children, beneficiaries with disabilities, and family businesses each add their own considerations. None of those depend on the size of the exemption. They depend on careful drafting that reflects your family’s actual situation. For a closer look at how the foundational tools fit together, my earlier discussion of wills versus trusts under Indiana law covers when each one makes sense.

When the Higher Exemption Still Calls for Planning

A smaller group of Indiana families does need to think about the federal number. If your combined assets, including life insurance, retirement accounts, business interests, and real estate, are approaching or above $15 million as an individual or $30 million as a couple, the planning conversation changes. Lifetime gifting, irrevocable trusts, and valuation strategies become relevant, and the permanence of the new exemption gives you room to act deliberately rather than under deadline pressure.

Owning property in another state can also pull a different state’s death tax into the picture, since some states still impose one even though Indiana does not. Multi-state ownership is worth reviewing on its own terms.

Whether the new exemption is welcome news you can set aside or a reason to revisit a larger plan, the sensible move is to look at your documents in light of where the law now stands. Attorney Burton Padove has spent nearly four decades helping Indiana families build plans that hold up, and a focused review can tell you quickly whether your current plan still does what you intend. Padove Law offers free, in-home consultations across Indiana, and you can reach the office at (219) 836-2200 to talk through your situation and decide on a practical next step.

The post What the New $15 Million Federal Estate Tax Exemption Means for Indiana Families in 2026 appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

Indiana law addresses this problem directly. Under Indiana Code § 30-5-9-9, an institution that refuses to honor a valid Indiana power of attorney within three business days faces significant liability, including treble damages, attorney’s fees, and prejudgment interest. The statute gives agents real leverage, yet most families never learn about it until the rejection has already caused harm.

What Indiana Law Requires When an Institution Refuses a Power of Attorney

The post When Indiana Banks Reject a Valid Power of Attorney and What the Law Allows Agents to Do About It appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

Indiana’s Transfer on Death Property Act, codified at Indiana Code § 32-17-14-11, allows property owners to name a beneficiary who will receive real estate automatically at death. The deed is revocable during the owner’s lifetime, does not require delivery to the beneficiary, and does not give the beneficiary any present interest in the property. Those features make it attractive. They also make it easy to treat the deed as a standalone fix, when it really needs to work alongside every other piece of the plan.

How Title Type Determines Whether an Indiana Transfer-on-Death Deed Works at All

The post Indiana Transfer-on-Death Deeds and the Coordination Mistakes That Send Families to Probate appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

A February 9, 2026, Indiana Court of Appeals opinion is a useful example. The dispute involved a beneficiary seeking a statement of accounts and co-trustees asking a court to confirm that a surviving settlor could remove a piece of trust property after the other settlor’s death. The trial court granted summary judgment against the co-trustees. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, focusing on how the trust language fit together and how the trust treated tenancy-by-the-entireties property.

The Trust Fight That Landed in Court

The post Indiana Trust Accounting Disputes and Trustee Recordkeeping Lessons from a Recent Court of Appeals Decision appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

What Senate Bill 71 Does in 2026

SB 71 is not a single-issue bill. The bill includes probate-related provisions and establishes a task force to revise the temporary guardianship code. The task force structure matters for Indiana families and practitioners, since guardianship filings often serve as a pressure valve when incapacity planning is missing or a power of attorney does not function in practice. The bill materials reflect that the guardianship task force is designed to study recodification and needed changes, then issue recommendations, rather than pushing a full rewrite through one bill cycle.

SB 71 also addresses how Indiana studies probate and trust issues going forward. The committee substitute language provides for repealing the Probate Code Study Committee and shifting the study function to the Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary in even-numbered years, with an express study mandate that reaches probate, trust code, and other statutes affecting estates, guardianship, probate jurisdiction, trusts, and fiduciary administration.

The Practical Point for Estate Planning in Northwest Indiana

A study committee change can sound procedural, yet it signals the pipeline for future amendments. When probate and trust topics move into an interim committee with broader court-and-judiciary responsibilities, practitioners should expect greater focus on administrative pain points that courts and clerks repeatedly encounter, including filing practices, guardianship reporting, and fiduciary oversight. Those topics tend to drive changes in how quickly families can access accounts, how guardianship orders are processed, and what documentation third parties, such as banks, title companies, and investment custodians, require.

Estate planning clients rarely care which committee studied a change. Clients care about whether a spouse can act during incapacity without a costly court process, whether a successor trustee can step in cleanly, and whether the plan reduces delay at death. Those goals are still met through fundamentals, yet the fundamentals work best when documents and funding choices anticipate the most common friction points.

Guardianship Reform Signals a Renewed Focus on Incapacity Planning

The guardianship code revision task force is a reminder that incapacity planning deserves as much attention as transfer-on-death planning. A well-drafted, durable power of attorney and health care planning set can keep a family out of court, yet in practice, families still end up in guardianship matters when a document is stale, incomplete, rejected by a financial institution, or deemed insufficient by a medical provider. SB 71’s task force structure suggests Indiana expects continued review of how guardianship should operate, including protections, reporting obligations, and procedural clarity.

For planning purposes, these points toward three disciplined habits. The first habit is confirming that the person named as agent is available, trustworthy, and capable, as the wrong choice increases the odds that a court proceeding will be necessary. The second habit is drafting powers that are specific enough to satisfy institutional compliance teams, since vague authority often leads to rejection and delay. The third habit is keeping the plan current, since an outdated power of attorney can still cause friction even when it is legally valid.

Probate and Trust Code Study Changes Affect Future Drafting Assumptions

SB 71’s shift in study responsibility does not change the text of every probate or trust rule today, yet it changes the forum that will propose the next wave of revisions. Practitioners should watch for recommendations addressing routine administration disputes, including fiduciary accounting expectations, notice requirements, bond questions, and clarity on nonprobate transfers that intersect with probate filings.

For clients, the drafting takeaway is less about predicting specific future statutory language and more about building plans that remain workable as procedures evolve. A trust that includes clear successor trustee provisions, flexible administrative powers, and a sensible approach to accountings often ages better than a document that is technically correct yet operationally vague. A will plan that coordinates with beneficiary designations and payable-on-death registrations often reduces the risk that procedural changes cause additional delay, since fewer assets require court administration in the first place.

What to Review in Your Current Plan Right Now

SB 71 should prompt a practical review rather than a panic rewrite. Many Indiana families have documents that remain valid, yet their plan may not function smoothly under modern institutional expectations and evolving court procedures. The review should focus on how the plan operates when someone is unavailable, when a bank asks for proof, and when the family needs authority quickly.

A focused review typically includes confirming that: the power of attorney language actually authorizes the actions the family will need; successor agents are named and are still appropriate; health care documents and HIPAA authorizations reflect current preferences; trust funding matches the intended probate-avoidance strategy; and the plan includes a workable approach for real estate, since property transfers often create the most delay in probate administration.

A review should also consider the risk of guardianship. A plan that leaves uncertainty about who should act, or that names an agent who cannot serve, increases the odds of court involvement at the worst possible time. If Indiana updates guardianship procedures after the task force work, families will still prefer to avoid guardianship when a better planning solution exists.

What These Developments Mean for Solo Practitioners and Their Clients

For a solo practice serving Northwest Indiana, the value in tracking SB 71 is practical rather than theoretical. Clients will ask why a financial institution wants different documentation than it wanted five years ago, why a guardianship filing includes new reporting steps, or why a trust administration process now requires more formal recordkeeping. Legislative updates that shape study priorities tend to translate into later procedural updates, and those updates are exactly what families experience as friction.

Attorney Burton Padove can help clients position their plans so they remain functional as the state refines the administration of probate and guardianship. That work usually involves tightening the operational details, confirming decision-makers, and aligning documents with how assets are held, rather than creating unnecessary layers.

Contact Attorney Burton Padove at Padove Law

If you want to review an existing estate plan in light of Indiana’s 2026 probate and guardianship developments, or you want a plan that reduces court involvement when possible, contact Attorney Burton Padove at Padove Law at (219) 836-2200.

The post Indiana 2026 Probate and Guardianship Changes That Estate Plans Should Anticipate appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

Local rules rarely change the underlying rights of heirs, beneficiaries, or fiduciaries. Procedure still shapes how quickly those rights become practical. A personal representative may have authority on paper, while a bank waits for letters issued in the precise format the clerk requires. A trustee may need court guidance, while the court expects filings to follow local filing sequence and formatting rules. Families who know what to expect at the county level tend to avoid avoidable setbacks.

Indiana Probate Court Local Rules

The post Indiana Probate Court Local Rules and Trust Administration Filing Details Families Miss appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.

Trust ownership does not insulate property from local regulation, neighbor pressure, or county enforcement. Trustees still have to act within the trust’s authority while also meeting the rules that apply to the land itself.

Indiana Trust-Owned Real Estate Disputes

The post Trust-Owned Real Estate Disputes and Trustee Authority in Indiana appeared first on Indiana Injury And Family Lawyer Blog.