Request By:
Mrs. Dorothy Winfield
Chief Deputy Clerk
Jefferson District Court
District Fifteen
Hall of Justice
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Richard O. Wyatt, Assistant Attorney General
Please reference your letter to Assistant Attorney General Penny Warren dated April 3, 1981, requesting an opinion of this Office regarding the effect of the 1980 General Assembly's amendment of KRS 395.610.
Specifically, you ask whether a fiduciary who has been appointed within the year preceding July 15, 1980, must file his first periodic settlement within one year (being governed by the old statute) or within two years (being governed by the amended statute) of his appointment.
This Office is of the opinion that such periodic settlements are governed by the amended statute, making the two-year rather than the one-year limitation applicable. This change is of the nature which the Kentucky Court of Appeals has characterized as "a mere passive extension of time."
Peach v. 21 Brands Distillery, Ky. App., 580 S.W.2d 235 (1979), disc. rev. den. Further, this interpretation is consistent with the reasoning used by the former Court of Appeals (Kentucky Supreme Court) in
Kiser v. Bartley Mining Company, Ky., 397 S.W.2d 56 (1965).
It should be noted that this opinion does not address the converse circumstances in which a time limitation were reduced from two years to one year by a statutory amendment.