New Homestead Law takes effect tomorrow

The long-awaited major revision to Massachusetts General Law chapter 188 (Declaration of Homestead) takes effect tomorrow. We've posted the full version of the new law on our website. In seeking to clarify many of the ambiguities of the old law, the new statute is quite extensive and takes several readings to begin to fully digest. The Secretary of State has posted a Question and Answer pamphlet on his website and I plan to post a concise fact sheet on the new law to the lowelldeeds site in the coming days.

In the meantime, new forms (there are two: one for property owned by individuals and another for property owned by a trust) are available on the Secretary of State's website in PDF version that can be completed on your computer and then printed. Here at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds, most of our Homestead customers just walk in and complete the form here, so we have slimmed down versions of the regular homestead and the trust homestead here at the registry and on our website.