Major Legislation Update: Kentucky Senate Bill 50

On April 13, 2026, Governor Andy Beshear signed Senate Bill 50 into law, ushering in one of the most significant updates to Kentucky inheritance and estate administration laws in recent years. Effective July 14, 2026, the legislation expands spousal rights, streamlines probate procedures, and authorizes electronic wills and other estate planning documents. Together, these changes modernize the Commonwealth’s legal framework and will affect how many Kentuckians plan, transfer, and administer assets.

The bill modernizes the probate process by allowing certain declarations under penalty of perjury in place of sworn oaths, authorizing courts to waive some appointment hearings, and increasing the penalty for a fiduciary’s failure to file an inventory or account. It also requires the clerk to report untimely filings to the judge on a monthly basis and removes the sheriff as a public administrator. In addition, SB 50 creates procedures to dispense with administration in certain testate and intestate estates and updates the rules governing periodic and final settlements.

A major feature of SB 50 is its adoption of the Uniform Electronic Wills Act and the Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act. Under these new provisions, electronic wills and covered estate-planning documents may be given legal effect if the statute’s execution, revocation, notarization, and recordkeeping requirements are satisfied. The law also allows certified paper copies of electronic wills and provides that a covered document will not be denied legal effect solely because it is in electronic form.

SB 50 also significantly expands Kentucky trust law by creating the Kentucky Qualified Dispositions in Trust Act and adopting the Uniform Directed Trust Act and the Uniform Trust Decanting Act. These provisions add new rules for asset-protection trusts, trust directors, fiduciary duties, decanting procedures, notice requirements, and court involvement in disputes, while preserving certain creditor claims such as past-due child support, spousal maintenance, and marital-property division orders. The legislation also repeals older trust provisions that overlapped with the new framework.

Senate Bill 50 represents one of the most comprehensive revisions to Kentucky probate, estate planning, trust, and fiduciary law in recent decades. Because the legislation amends numerous statutes and adopts several uniform acts affecting wills, trusts, probate administration, Medicaid planning, and asset protection strategies, attorneys should review the enacted statutory language and any subsequent guidance, court interpretations, or administrative regulations before relying on any summary of its provisions. This information provided by LMICK is intended solely as a general educational guide and risk-management resource for Kentucky practitioners. It is not legal advice, should not be relied upon as a substitute for independent legal research, and may not address all aspects of the legislation or its application to specific factual circumstances.

Because of the breadth of the revisions and the practice areas impacted, LMICK will be working to bring you additional articles with more specific discussion of these changes in Senate Bill 50. The first such article is found below. Thank you Ruth Baxter, LMICK’s former Board Chair, for her contribution.