FINCEN Real Estate Reporting Requirement Suspended

A federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas imposed an injunction against the enforcement of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN’s) Real Estate Reporting Requirement created under the Corporate Transparency Act on March 19, 2026.

This is subsequent to FinCEN’s issuance of an interim final rule in March 2025 that limited the applicability of the CTA’s Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirement (BOIR) portion to apply only to “foreign reporting companies.” The real estate reporting requirement originally went into effect on Dec. 1, 2025.

The plaintiffs in this case, Flowers Title Companies, LLC v. Bessent et. al. (No. 6:25-cv-00127-JDK), challenged the Real Estate Reporting Requirement (RERR) on the basis that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act, or that alternately it violated the non-delegation doctrine of the Commerce Clause and Fourth Amendment.

The federal judge held that FinCEN’s reporting requirement for certain non-financed real estate transactions creating a transfer to a trust and other entities exceeded the authority Congress granted FinCEN under the Bank Secrecy Act.

Since the ruling, FinCEN’s Residential Real Estate Rule compliance page notes that in light of the ruling, “reporting persons are not currently required to file real estate reports with FinCEN and are not subject to liability if they fail to do so while the order remains in force.” At this time, it is unclear if FinCEN will appeal this ruling. That being said, for now it appears that trust and estates practitioners will not be required to file FinCEN reports for trust transfer deeds, or for other real estate-to-entity transfers.

Halperin v. Halperin, 118 Cal.App.5th 193 (2026)

Summary: California’s First District Court of Appeal confirmed that a claim for intentional interference with an expected inheritance can only be brought if no adequate remedy is available to the petitioner in probate court.

Halperin v. Halperin, a case out of California’s First District Court of Appeal, addresses when someone may, or may not, be able to seek redress using a claim for intentional interference with an expected inheritance.

Warren Halperin created a trust benefiting his three children. Years later, the daughter learned that the trust terms would give her about $1 million less than her brothers. When she raised this concern with her father, he indicated that he had spoken to his attorney about equalizing the children’s shares and still planned to make those changes.

However, according to the daughter, the brothers subsequently interfered with the father’s attempts to amend the trust, including by interfering with the instructions the father gave his attorney, slandering the daughter’s character to the father, and limiting the father’s and daughter’s communications with each other.

The daughter filed suit against the brothers in probate court, for a claim of elder isolation and for removal of the brothers from the fiduciary roles they held for the father, and in civil court, for the tort of intentional interference with an expected inheritance (IIEI).

The daughter dismissed her own probate petition with prejudice, but maintained her civil suit. The civil trial court thereafter sustained the brother’s demurrer to the daughter’s civil suit on the grounds that available probate remedies prevented her from bringing an IIEI claim.

Ultimately, to bring an IIEI claim, the plaintiff must establish the following:

• The plaintiff had an expectancy of an inheritance;
• There was a reasonable certainty that the plaintiff would have received a devise if not for the defendant’s interference;
• The defendant knowingly and deliberately interfered with the expected inheritance;
• The defendant’s deliberate conduct (a) was directed at someone other than the plaintiff (e.g., at the testator), and (b) was independently wrongful for a reason other than its interference with an expected inheritance; and
• There was resulting damage.

However, even if these factors are satisfied, a successful claim for IIEI also requires thatrecognizing the tort be necessary to provide the injured party with an adequate remedy.

In other words, an IIEI claim cannot stand when an adequate probate remedy exists to remedy the harm. Because adequate probate remedies were available to the daughter, who had standing in probate court to bring a claim challenging her brothers’ allegedly wrongful acts, her tort claim was dismissed.

The court also noted that remedies available in probate court need not be identical to those available in civil court for such remedies to be deemed adequate.