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Bar practice section backs technical probate fixes in Senate Bill 168
Summary
The Estate Planning and Administration section of the Oregon State Bar backed Senate Bill 168 in a public hearing, saying it corrects drafting errors on parentage for intestate succession, clarifies the harmless‑error will statute and expands the simple estate affidavit rules for trusts.
At a public hearing on Senate Bill 168, legislative counsel and the Oregon State Bar’s Estate Planning and Administration section described a set of technical amendments to Oregon probate law intended to fix drafting errors and clarify procedure.
"The purpose of the harmless error statute is to allow a court to address mistakes that were made in the execution of a will," June Wyrick Flores of the Estate Planning and Administration section said, summarizing the statute the bill would clarify.
Laurie Ann Sills of the Office of Legislative Counsel explained that sections of SB 168 amend ORS 112.235 and ORS 112.238 (the harmless‑error provisions) and change the statute’s applicability clause so certain provisions may apply where a writing was executed before the statute’s effective date but the decedent dies after the bill’s effective date. She said the change mirrors the prior 2015 enactment pattern but avoids unintended limits on older documents.
June Wyrick Flores said the bill corrects a 2017 drafting error in ORS 112.105 that replaced "or" with an "and," which could have raised the burden for children to prove parentage in intestate succession. The section would revert the statute to allow parentage to be established by the same methods used in family‑law proceedings or by a written acknowledgement.
The bill also clarifies the "simple estate affidavit" (formerly "small estate" rules) where a decedent has a revocable trust: SB 168 would exempt trust distributions and specific bequests to a decedent’s trustee from the small‑estate valuation limits (the statute’s thresholds of $75,000 for personal property and $200,000 for real property are reflected in current law). Flores and Sills said the change was intended to let estates that direct property to a decedent’s trust use the simplified affidavit procedure where appropriate.
SB 168 would also add ORCP 45 (requests for admissions) to the probate‑applicable civil procedure rules list and clarify that electronic records or images do not by themselves satisfy will‑formality exceptions.
Committee members asked technical questions about applicability and thresholds and staff indicated they would work on minor drafting clarifications and share amendments with committee counsel. The hearing was informational and produced no committee vote.
