Three Greenleaf Bills Approved by
Legislature
HARRISBURG— Three bills sponsored by Sen.
Stewart J. Greenleaf, R-Montgomery/Bucks, have achieved
passage in the General Assembly and now await the Governor's
signature to become law. They include measures dealing with
child support collection, interstate parole applicant fees,
and Probate Code revisions.
Senate Bill 1205 will enable the Department
of Public Welfare to collect more overdue child support
payments by allowing the department to intercept the child
support money owed from lump sum insurance and workers'
compensation payouts that may be made to the parent in
arrears.
Senate Bill 775 will impose an application
fee on offenders who apply to serve their parole out of
state through the Interstate Compact for the Supervision of
Adult Offenders, the entity that oversees the movement and
supervision of parolees between states. About half of all
states in the compact impose an application fee.
The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and
Parole would set the fee and would have the discretion to
reduce, waive or defer the fee payment based on an
applicant's ability to pay. Fees would be used to offset
assessments and other costs incurred by the commonwealth for
its participation in the Interstate Compact.
Senate Bill 660 amends the Probate Code to
incorporate the Uniform Trust Code and to provide
modifications to the law regarding trusts. The goal of the
legislation is to provide an organized and comprehensive
statute to make it easier for judges and attorneys to access
the law and to assist trustees who do business in more than
one state to have a more uniform framework to comply with
the law. Greenleaf said that, since the legislation
encourages and in some cases requires trustees to
communicate with a trust's beneficiaries, beneficiaries of
Pennsylvania trusts will be better able to know when and how
to enforce their rights.
The measure is based on the recommendations
of the Joint State Government Commission's Advisory
Committee on Decedents' Estates Laws.
