CFPB Releases Tips Urging States to Adapt Guides Designed for Financial Caregivers

CFPB

On October 19, the CFPB released tips on how state bar associations and other legal organizations and professionals in all states can adapt the CFPB’s Managing Someone Else’s Money guides, which were released nationwide in 2013, followed by state-specific guides for Virginia in August 2015, and  Florida in September 2015. The four guides – (i) Agents under a power of attorney; (ii) Court-appointed guardians of property and conservators; (iii) Trustees; and (iv) Government-benefit fiduciaries – were designed to help financial caregivers manage another person’s finances and help protect them from financial scam and exploitation. While the CFPB intends to release state-specific guides for Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon in early 2016, the agency’s recent release of tips, which includes a list of topics most frequently changed in the state-specific guides, encourages the remaining states and territories that have varying fiduciary laws to adapt similar guides: “We hope this replication package will empower state bar associations and other groups of lawyers, courts, state agencies, and other professionals to collaborate in producing state-specific versions of these guides.”