CLE
Tereina Stidd
Tereina Stidd Duane Morris LLP
What Estate Planning Attorneys Should Do When a Client's Death Is Imminent
Recording Available Soon
What Estate Planning Attorneys Should Do When a Client's Death Is Imminent

When a client's death is imminent, the attorney's role shifts from long-range planning to urgent triage. This program provides a practical, five-part framework for trusts and estates practitioners who must act quickly under conditions of diminished capacity, family pressure, and compressed timelines. Participants will learn how to confirm authority and navigate ethical constraints; gather critical information in six triage categories; evaluate pre-death tax and non-tax interventions through a green/yellow/red risk framework filtered by basis preservation, liquidity protection, and probate avoidance; identify who holds medical decision-making and disposition authority; and stabilize the estate in the critical first 72 hours after death. The program emphasizes real-world hypotheticals, the tension between powers of attorney and revocable trusts over client assets, and the fiduciary and ethical boundaries that constrain every action.

Topics covered include:
Wills, Trusts & Estates
Agenda:
  • Preliminary Considerations: Authority, Capacity, and Ethics
    • Confirms whether counsel can act at all, and under what authority.
    • Covers diminished capacity under MRPC 1.14, the ethical baseline (MRPC 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8(f), 4.3), acting under a power of attorney (including the Uniform Power of Attorney Act, agent duties, and hot powers), successor trustee authority under the UTC, the tension between the POA and the revocable trust over client assets, and the threshold question of whether to change an existing plan — including red flags that warrant extreme caution.
  • Information Triage: What Do We Need to Know Immediately?
    • Organizes the facts into six categories that drive every subsequent decision: proof of authority, instruments controlling transfer at death, tax and basis data, liquidity and debts, vulnerable and hard-to-access assets (including digital assets under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act), and family dynamics and fiduciary succession.
  • Pre-Death Improvements to the Plan
    • Applies a green/yellow/red risk framework to tax and non-tax interventions that may still be accomplished before death — including annual exclusion gifts, Roth conversions, valuation-discount transactions, trust decanting, and GST planning.
    • Each proposed action is then filtered through three overarching principles: preserve basis (do not forfeit the IRC § 1014 step-up), protect liquidity (quantify cash needs before acting), and avoid probate (assess whether the action pulls assets into or out of the probate estate).
    • Also addresses business and entity interests and strategies for obtaining a basis step-up in trust assets.
  • Medical Care and Disposition of Remains
    • Identifies who holds decision-making authority over medical care during incapacity (advance directives, HIPAA authorizations, DNR/POLST forms) and who controls disposition of remains after death.
    • Distinguishes health-care authority from burial authority and addresses conflicts between written directives and agent decisions.
  • Stabilization Before Administration: The First 72 Hours
    • Covers the immediate post-death period: confirming that the POA has terminated and identifying who now has authority (nominated executor, successor trustee, special administrator); securing, documenting, and insuring assets; preserving tax options and elections (EIN, Form 56, final Form 1040, Section 645 election); managing business continuity; and avoiding premature distributions that could forfeit disclaimer rights or expose the fiduciary to personal liability.
Read More ›
Duration of this webinar: 60 minutes
Originally broadcast: September 9, 2026 10:00 AM PT
Recording Available Soon
Speaker
Tereina Stidd
Tereina Stidd Special Counsel
Duane Morris LLP

Tereina R. Stidd is special counsel in the firm's Private Client Services Practice Group. She advises individuals, families, and fiduciaries on sophisticated estate planning, wealth transfer, trust and estate administration, and related tax matters. Her practice includes designing tax-efficient wealth transfer strategies, counseling clients on all aspects of estate planning, fiduciary administration, wealth preservation, asset protection, and domicile planning, and helping families navigate complex estate and trust administration matters. Read More ›

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Credits

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Alabama CLE

Status: Approved

Format: On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

Alaska CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

California CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

Hawaii CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

Illinois CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

New Jersey CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.20 General

North Carolina CLE

Status: Approved

Format: On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

Ohio CLE

Status: Approved

Format: On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General

Pennsylvania CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 Substantive Law, Practice, and Procedure

Texas CLE

Status: Pending

Format: On-Demand

Credits: TBD

Vermont CLE

Status: Approved

Format: Live (Virtual), On-Demand

Credits: 1.00 General


This presentation is approved for two hours of total CLE credit in Alabama, one hour of General CLE credit in Alaska, one hour of General CLE credit in California, one hour of General CLE credit in Hawaii, one hour of General CLE credit in Illinois, one hour of General CLE credit in Missouri, one hour of General CLE credit in Nevada, two hours of total CLE credit in North Carolina, two hours of total CLE credit in Ohio, one hour of Substantive Law, Practice, and Procedure CLE credit in Pennsylvania, one hour of General CLE credit in Vermont, and one hour of General CLE credit in West Virginia. This program has been approved by the Board on Continuing Legal Education of the Supreme Court of New Jersey for 1.20 hours of total CLE credit. This course has been approved for Minimum Continuing Legal Education credit by the State Bar of Texas Committee on MCLE in the amount of 2.00 credit hours.

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