GeorgiaHB 3272025-2026 Regular SessionHouseWALLET

Official Code of Georgia Annotated; amend various titles

Sponsored By: Chuck Efstration (Republican), Stacey Evans (Democrat), Stan Gunter (Republican), Rob Leverett (Republican), Mary Oliver (Democrat), Matt Reeves (Republican)

Signed by Governor

JudiciaryGeneral Bill

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49 provisions identified: 18 benefits, 6 costs, 25 mixed.

Inheritance rights for assisted reproduction families

Children conceived through insemination, in vitro fertilization, or similar methods inherit as their parents' children when legally presumed legitimate. The law establishes that presumption when both spouses consent in writing. These children can inherit from the parents and their relatives when someone dies without a will. Those relatives can also inherit from or through the child. Georgia's adoption rules control when they conflict with this inheritance rule.

Inheritance rights control wrongful death recovery

A child born outside marriage can recover for a parent's wrongful death only with inheritance rights through that parent. Those rights must exist under Georgia's inheritance law for children born outside marriage. The law does not set a recovery amount.

More paths to paternal family inheritance

Children born outside marriage and paternal relatives can establish inheritance rights through accepted paternity orders, acknowledgments, and birth-certificate evidence. Qualifying embryo-relinquishment arrangements or genetic tests showing at least 97% probability of paternity create a presumption. Tests must meet expert and laboratory standards, and clear and convincing evidence can defeat the presumption. Orders cannot have been set aside, and acknowledgments must remain valid; some paternal-relative evidence must date from the child's lifetime. For paternal relatives, specified statements or acknowledgments do not count when clear and convincing evidence shows nonconsensual conception or a mother under 10.

Judges can manage larger protected funds

The law raises the probate judge’s fund-management limit from $15,000 to $25,000. This applies to eligible minors or adults who need a conservator but have no legally qualified conservator. Judges can receive, hold, and distribute the money without being appointed conservator or receiving a qualifying order. The judge decides whether to act, and funds due cannot exceed $25,000. Notice must go to a minor’s living parents, if any, or an adult’s guardian, if any.

Adults gain access to court-managed funds

An adult who needs a conservator and has no legally qualified conservator can access probate-judge custody and distribution of funds. This replaces the former eligibility wording referring to an incapacitated adult. The law's custodial disbursement limit is $25,000; this is access to existing funds, not a new benefit payment.

Beneficiaries can seek trust payout changes

Petitions to convert a trust to a unitrust, change specified unitrust terms, or reverse conversion can go to court. They no longer must be directed specifically to superior court. A beneficiary can petition for conversion after requesting it and the trustee does not act. The court must order conversion when it better carries out the creator's intent and the trust's purposes.

Court fixes for long-term property gifts

Trustees, trust directors, and affected people can ask courts to repair property gifts subject to Georgia's long-term ownership limits. Repairs must closely follow the giver's stated distribution plan and stay within the applicable legal time limits. For interests created before July 1, 2018, that violate the former rule, courts have additional repair options. These include equitable relief, approved settlements or trust changes, and approved use of trust principal to meet the limits. Relief is available through a court petition, not guaranteed.

Electronic trust documents gain legal recognition

Covered trust and legal records, signatures, and evidence cannot be rejected solely because they are electronic. Electronic records can satisfy writing, original-document, storage, sending, copying, and filing requirements when accurate and accessible. Electronic signatures can satisfy signature requirements and be linked to a person through their actions and surrounding facts. Electronic acknowledgments and notarizations must include the required person’s signature and other required information attached or linked to the record. Agencies can add record-storage requirements. A certified paper copy must be affirmed under penalty of perjury as complete and accurate.

Estate beneficiaries receive notice within six months

Estate representatives must tell will beneficiaries that the will was accepted and provide their name and mailing address. Notice is due within six months after the first representative qualifies. Beneficiaries can waive notice in writing, and a beneficiary who is the representative needs no notice. Notice is also unnecessary for beneficiaries who acknowledged service and assented to the probate petition when the representative was a petitioner. If a beneficiary trust has no separate trustee, each trust beneficiary eligible for current payments receives notice.

Heirs receive yearly estate financial information

After filing an annual return, representatives must mail a copy without supporting vouchers to intestate heirs and beneficiaries receiving the estate's remainder. Other gift beneficiaries receive the relevant portion or a written account; people whose estate interests are satisfied are excluded. Annual statements also report principal and income received and spent, plus ending assets and debts, with gift-specific information for other beneficiaries. Guardians and conservators must request information in writing; statement waivers or court relief are allowed, and a will can excuse statements only without harming creditors or nonbeneficiaries. After alleged mismanagement by an excused representative, the court can require statements or revoke the appointment for failure to show cause, following personal service at least ten days before the hearing.

Legal papers can reach foreign trust directors

Foreign entities acting as trust directors in Georgia consent to receiving legal papers through Georgia’s Secretary of State. This applies to lawsuits based on their actions or failures to act. An entity can instead name an in-state agent and file that designation with the Secretary of State.

More exceptions for long-term trust powers

Georgia's rule limiting long-term property interests expressly exempts contracts to make or not revoke a will or trust. Qualifying fiduciary powers to direct property management are also exempt. The exception also covers a trust director's authority to direct principal payments before a trust ends. For that payment exception, the beneficiary's rights to both income and principal must be fixed and unable to be lost.

More grounds for removing harmful trustees

Interested people can petition to remove trustees without the former express good-cause filing requirement; courts can also start removal themselves. Removal still requires authority in the trust document or a legal ground. Grounds include serious breaches, harmful conflicts among trustees, unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure to act. Changed circumstances or unanimous qualified-beneficiary requests also support removal when it serves beneficiaries, respects the trust's purpose, and a suitable replacement exists.

More ways to resolve inheritance disputes

People required to distribute property to heirs can seek an heirship ruling, as can qualifying child-support recipients concerning an obligor's estate. Petitions can go to the estate's probate court or the same county's superior court. Contested year's-support cases must stay in probate court. Most agreements with an alleged father cannot block an heirship petition, except qualifying court-approved paternity agreements. A guardian can represent a deceased heir's estate in property division when it has no personal representative.

Protection for qualifying remotely signed wills

The law protects wills and will amendments signed or witnessed under Governor’s Executive Order 04.09.20.01. They cannot be ruled invalid solely because the person making the will was not physically present during signing or witnessing. Other grounds for challenging the document remain unaffected.

Trust beneficiaries gain representation safeguards

A trust donor cannot represent and bind a beneficiary in specified trust changes or termination matters. A qualified beneficiary entitled to receive property at termination can represent later beneficiaries only without a conflict over the matter. An affected person or someone claiming authority to represent them can ask a court to review whether representation is adequate. Courts can appoint representatives for minors, incapacitated or unborn people, and people whose identity or location cannot reasonably be found. No pending trust case is needed for that appointment.

Charitable trusts gain representation and court options

The Georgia Attorney General has qualified-beneficiary rights for charitable trusts. Those rights also cover noncharitable trusts when an unidentifiable class of charitable beneficiaries meets the statutory beneficiary test. Named charities eligible for trust income or principal gain those rights when they meet that test when status is determined. Donors and interested people can ask a court to change or end a charitable trust with an unlawful, impractical, impossible, or wasteful purpose. The court must follow the donor's intent as closely as possible.

More people can manage estates and trusts

Qualified individuals can administer estates of Georgia residents regardless of citizenship or where they live. Eligible nonresidents can also serve as Georgia trustees, and individuals can serve as trust directors regardless of citizenship or residency. An organization serving as trust director must have authority to act as a Georgia trustee. Entities authorized in their home jurisdiction can serve in several Georgia fiduciary roles, generally without Georgia business licensing or foreign-entity registration. The law retains exceptions; national banks use the state of their principal place of business to establish authority.

More ways to honor charitable donors

People who create or donate to a trust with charitable and noncharitable purposes can sue to enforce its charitable purposes. Institutions can also consider donors’ personal values when managing and investing institutional funds. Those values can include social, political, religious, environmental, philosophical, or governance views. Considering those values is optional, and the fund must still serve the institution’s charitable purpose.

Stronger care rules for charitable funds

Institutional fund managers must act in good faith and use prudent care, skill, and caution, considering relevant special circumstances. Institutions must also use reasonable care when deciding whether to spend or save endowment assets, while respecting donor intent. A donor's authorized power-of-attorney agent or legally empowered conservator can represent the donor in changing gift restrictions. Probate or superior courts can handle that process when the gift document creates an express trust. These rules do not set a payout or investment return.

Donors face creditor claims against trusts

A living donor's creditors can reach property in a trust that donor can revoke. For an irrevocable trust, creditors or assignees can reach the maximum amount distributable to or for the donor. After death, estate creditors can reach specified trust property when the probate estate is inadequate, including trusts revocable at death or made irrevocable by incapacity. The law removes the express contribution-based cap on a particular settlor's creditors in a trust with multiple settlors. While a withdrawal power is exercisable, its holder is treated like a revocable-trust creator for that property; letting it lapse, releasing it, or waiving it does not make the holder a donor.

Trust claim clock starts when sent

Beneficiaries must start breach-of-trust cases within two years after an adequate written report is sent, rather than received. The report must give enough information to recognize or reasonably investigate the claim. Without an adequate report, the deadline remains six years after discovery or when discovery reasonably should have happened.

Trust power rules lose statutory provisions

The law repeals the section concerning powers granted by qualified trust beneficiaries. It also removes an express power-of-attorney rule reference for agents exercising a trustee's powers. The supplied text does not identify the repealed powers or state what standard replaces the removed reference.

Georgia early care agency gains data access

Georgia’s Department of Early Care and Learning can use personal information otherwise covered by an information-protection rule. The exception applies only to purposes authorized in Chapter 1A of Title 20.

Licensed doctors required for fertility procedures

Only properly licensed physicians or surgeons can perform insemination, in vitro fertilization, or similar assisted reproduction on female patients. Unauthorized performance or attempted performance is a felony. The penalty is one to five years in prison.

Creditors gain simpler estate claim notices

Creditors can submit estate claims in writing without a special form. Notices must identify the debt, principal balance, and applicable lawful interest or charges. An ordinary invoice or account statement counts when received by the representative, filed with probate court, or sent through authorized delivery methods. Electronic messages to the deceased person's account count only when their contents can legally be shared with the representative. Recognized claims can support creditor payment and reduce what remains for heirs.

Estate managers gain broader borrowing powers

Estate and trust fiduciaries can borrow for any purpose, not just to pay debts, taxes, or other charges. They can choose interest rates, repayment dates, renewals, and security terms they consider advisable. They can pledge estate or trust property to secure the loan. This expands financing options but exposes that property to repayment obligations.

Estate managers gain payment and delegation options

An estate representative's pay can follow a written agreement with the deceased person or a qualifying agreement signed after death. After death, all affected will beneficiaries or all intestate heirs must sign; a duly acting guardian or conservator can sign for someone unable to act legally. Without a qualifying agreement, compensation follows the will. For consent to additional estate powers, a deceased heir's or beneficiary's estate representative can consent, or a guardian can act when that estate lacks a representative. Co-representatives normally act unanimously unless the will says otherwise; remaining representatives can act when necessary during a vacancy or inability to act, and written delegation leaves all liable for the delegate's actions.

Estates can skip some bond requirements

Qualifying banks and trust companies can serve as intestate estate representatives or temporary administrators without posting a bond. Their combined capital, surplus, and undivided profits must total at least $400,000, and the governing document cannot require a bond. All heirs of an estate without a will can also agree to waive a representative's bond. A guardian can consent for heirs unable to act legally or deceased heirs whose estates lack representatives, but the applicant cannot consent for them. Skipping a bond can lower estate costs but removes that financial safeguard.

Heirs can waive estate reporting duties

All heirs or will beneficiaries can consent in writing for the court to excuse an estate inventory. Once excused, the representative also need not send inventory copies, regardless of when consent was signed. An individual can waive annual-return delivery in writing and revoke that waiver in writing. Unanimous written consent included in a petition lets the court excuse annual-return filing, delivery, or both. These options reduce paperwork but also reduce information available to heirs and beneficiaries.

Inheritance DNA costs and sample safeguards

The person requesting DNA testing usually pays for sampling, testing, reports, and removal and return of remains. After a hearing opportunity, courts can shift testing costs for bad faith or unreasonable failure to cooperate. Courts can also divide reasonable lawyer, expert, guardian ad litem, and other case costs. Samples from removed remains must be destroyed within a court-set reasonable time unless the court finds good cause otherwise. Other samples follow the source's return or destruction directions, and sharing is limited to carrying out these requirements.

Inheritance DNA testing gains new boundaries

Heirship DNA testing does not require written consent obtained before the deceased person's death. Court-ordered removal and return of remains bypass specified permits and disturbance bans, but abandoned burial grounds retain special safeguards. Courts cannot order a party's DNA test when adoption created or ended kinship, unless inheritance rights were unaffected or assisted reproduction applies. Testing an unborn child's kinship must wait until medically feasible after birth. Courts can pause the case until birth, but notices must still be served.

Inheritance testing orders carry enforcement penalties

Courts can enforce DNA-testing orders in inheritance proceedings through contempt. If the person requesting testing refuses to comply, the court can dismiss or strike that person’s court filings. Before doing so, the court must give the parties a reasonable chance to be heard.

Limits on beneficiaries controlling trust payments

Beneficiaries serving as trustees or trust directors, but not settlors or donors, generally need an ascertainable standard for self-payments. They face limits on shifting income and principal and cannot use distributions to meet their own legal support obligations. Express trust terms and specified marital-deduction, revocable, annual-exclusion, and general-appointment-power exceptions can override these limits; other authorized fiduciaries or a court-appointed special fiduciary can act. A related or subordinate replacement appointed by a beneficiary faces similar payment limits and cannot satisfy that beneficiary's legal obligations or grant a general appointment power. That replacement rule does not apply when appointment requires another person with a substantial opposing property interest.

Marital trusts change donor attribution after death

After the donor's spouse dies, property in a marital trust created during life is treated as contributed by that spouse. The spouse becomes the donor of that property for these rules. Property added after the spouse's death is excluded. The rule uses the marriage relationship when the trust was created, even if the couple was no longer married at death.

Trust creditor shields exclude self-funded property

Creditors and transferees cannot force a trustee or trust director to make a payment left to that person's discretion. This protection applies even with a distribution standard or when that decision-maker is also a beneficiary. It does not protect the part the beneficiary contributed. A spendthrift clause also cannot protect the beneficiary's own contributions, except in special needs trusts established under federal Section 1396p(d)(4)(A) or (C).

Trust director lawsuits change on both sides

The law removes the express rule giving trust directors the same breach-of-trust defenses as similarly situated trustees. It also removes the rule making acceptance of a director role an express submission to Georgia court authority. People bringing claims may need another basis for Georgia courts to exercise authority over the director. These changes do not establish that all other defenses or grounds for court authority disappear.

Trust directors face specific oversight rules

Trust directors follow trustee rules for appointment, acceptance, pay, resignation, removal, and accounting. But the law removes the broad rule that references to trustees include trust directors whenever context allows. A trust power is excluded from the specified article only when the trust document says it is held outside a fiduciary role. That status must also be needed to achieve the trust creator's tax goals.

Trust managers can guarantee beneficiary debts

A fiduciary—a person or company managing assets for others—can guarantee a beneficiary’s debt or another obligation for that beneficiary’s benefit. The fiduciary can act with or without payment and choose the terms. This can help the beneficiary obtain credit, but can put trust or estate assets at risk.

Trust powerholders gain control over rights

A power of appointment lets its holder choose who receives property. A trustee or trust director's fiduciary duties do not govern using, or declining to use, that power over the same property. Someone exercising that power outside a fiduciary role can also set when beneficiaries receive specified reporting and related rights. This gives powerholders more control while reducing the protections governing those decisions.

Trust reports change who receives information

Irrevocable trust reports go to beneficiaries entitled or eligible for discretionary income or principal payments during the reporting period. Reports are due at least annually, at trust termination, and when a trustee changes. People able to revoke the trust also receive accountings, and successor trustees receive them when taking over. The separate final-report requirement for each remainder beneficiary is removed. Unidentifiable charitable beneficiaries of noncharitable trusts and beneficiaries with an unwithdrawn written reporting waiver are exempt.

Trust settlements bind parties but face limits

Trust terms include authorized later changes, court orders, out-of-court settlements, and terms established by applicable law. A valid out-of-court settlement binds its parties, including people represented by someone authorized to bind them. Its terms must be ones a court can approve and cannot violate a key trust purpose. During the trust creator's lifetime, such a settlement cannot change or end an irrevocable trust when approval is available only through the court process in Code Section 53-12-61(b).

Trust transfers retain debts and tax limits

Georgia's rules for moving assets into a second trust apply to trusts mainly administered in Georgia or governed by Georgia law. When a living donor's original trust is not a grantor trust, the second trust faces limits on powers to direct property. A power not exempt from federal tax Section 674(a) needs approval or consent from an adverse party; other federal rules can still make the new trust a grantor trust. Debts and obligations remain enforceable against transferred property to the same extent. Rules on noncompliant terms, donor attribution, and obligations cover transfers of income as well as principal.

Updated rules for assisted reproduction families

Birth-record rules now cover in vitro fertilization and similar methods, alongside artificial insemination, when a married woman’s husband consents. Rules for overturning paternity decisions also cover these methods. Physicians and surgeons get protection from civil claims over procedure results when both spouses sign written authorization. That protection applies to claims by the spouses and child, but does not cover the provider’s own negligence.

Clearer rules for replacing trust managers

A trustee vacancy can remain open if another trustee serves, unless the trust document requires a replacement. Replacement priority follows the named successor, the document's appointment process, unanimous qualified-beneficiary agreement, then court appointment. Courts can appoint extra trustees or special fiduciaries when needed, and authorized trust directors retain rights to arrange replacements. After an affiliate transfer, an affiliate trust company can be named as successor in trust and related legal documents. Corporate fiduciary restrictions also cover court-appointed estate representatives, temporary administrators, and administration of real or tangible personal property.

Estate claims allow limited AIDS record disclosure

Relevant AIDS-confidential information can be disclosed for specified insurance or benefit claims pursued by estate representatives, beneficiaries, heirs, successors, or assigns. Disclosure also covers specified court cases involving the person's care, condition, injuries, damages, or death, and coverage disputes. In estate proceedings authorized or required by Title 53, disclosure requires the representative's written consent or a court order through the specified process. These rules support claims and estate administration but permit disclosure of sensitive health records.

Updated legal choice rules for deeds

The law changes which legal election principles apply to deeds. It replaces the former references with Code Sections 53-4-70 and 53-4-71. The supplied text does not explain how those choices affect a party's property rights or money.

Personal property lists stay separate from wills

A written list directing gifts of tangible personal property remains separate from the person's will. It is neither the will nor part of it. This distinction applies to lists that meet Code Section 53-4-5(b).

Corporate trust managers gain financial flexibility

Corporate fiduciaries can borrow from their own banking departments for any purpose and choose the loan terms. They can pledge estate or trust property to secure those loans, putting that property at risk. Without court approval, they can exchange or convert their own securities and keep the replacement securities. This also covers securities received through listed transactions, such as holding-company conversions, mergers, stock splits, and liquidations. The replacement securities do not have to be substantially equivalent to the originals.

Sponsors & Cosponsors

Cosponsors

John F. Kennedy
Republican • Senate

Roll Call Votes

All Roll Calls

Yes: 225 • No: 0

Senate vote • 3/31/2025

PASSAGE

Yes: 49 • No: 0 • Other: 5

House vote • 3/3/2025