This firm recently published a guide for attorneys to the Georgia law of year's support for a continuing legal education event in Columbus, Georgia. 

The guide is intended for use by other attorneys and is fairly technical, but as I think it also may be useful to lay individuals petitioning for year's support, I am uploading it in its entirety here. 

We welcome comments and questions from readers about Georgia year's support law. 

  

Tanner Pittman, LLC regularly advises clients and assists with petitions for year's support, year's support litigation, and other probate and estate matters.  

The estate of Georgia singer James Brown, who died in 2006, has been plagued by trouble almost even before the testator's death. 

Recently, reported Forbes magazine, owing to court disputes and problems getting income streams from estate assets, the estate faced some $20 million in debt as against $14,000 in cash and other holdings. 

The Augusta Chronicle reported, furthermore, in January that an irrevocable trust established by Brown to benefit children's charities has been fleeced at least to the tune of $373,000 by  its former trustee, David Cannon. 

Presently, Cannon is battling a contempt charge in the South Carolina Supreme Court for failure to pay restitution of this amount, plus attorney fees and penalties. 

Working against Cannon in his efforts to argue the fees and fine are excessive is the fact that he owns a $1 million home in Honduras purchased, in large part it would seem, with funds from the Brown trust.  

Tanner Pittman, LLC is an estate planning and probate law firm that assists clients in pursuing cases of breach of fiduciary duty against executors and trustees in estates.  

The Georgia Supreme Court Monday handed down the case of Mason v. Phillips, which overturned the will of Frances E. Hobbs, which had left all of her property to her husband. 

Why? Because the will had been written in 1974 and not probated until 2005. Wills written prior to 1988 in Georgia were witnessed by three individuals but had no provision for a self-proving affidavit. 

That affidavit, which is now part of any well drafted will, allows testators to avoid the consequences in Mason v. Phillips. In that case, probating the nearly forty-year-old will required testimony from all the witnesses that they recalled witnessing the will and that those were indeed their signatures upon it. 

The case goes into further detail, (read more of the case here or by clicking the "read more" link below) but the upshot was that no witness could recall signing, and the one witness that could be found specifically said that he didn't remember the signing. 

Accordingly, an otherwise perfectly valid will was overturned. And this is the fate that presently awaits untold numbers of pre-1988 wills in Georgia. 

Fortunately, there is a fix: it is a simple thing for pre-1988 testators to amend their wills and have a self-proving affidavit added as a codicil, thus avoiding the need to, for example, develop forensic handwriting investigation testimony about long-dead witnesses.