Press Release  Supreme Judicial Court Amends Rules of Professional Conduct Regarding Disposition of Unidentified or Unclaimed Funds in IOLTA Accounts

BOSTON, MA — The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) has issued an order amending Rules 1.15 and 1.15A of the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct to establish procedures for lawyers to follow when they discover that the owner of funds in an IOLTA account cannot be identified or located, and to provide for the transfer of those funds to the Massachusetts IOLTA Committee. The new amendments will become effective on September 1, 2024.

Under Rule 1.15 of the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct, lawyers who have a law office in the Commonwealth must deposit trust funds in a pooled IOLTA account if the funds are nominal in amount or to be held for a short period of time. Interest or dividends paid by banks on these IOLTA accounts are transmitted to the IOLTA Committee, which in turn distributes this income to the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation and other charitable entities as directed by the SJC. 

The new amendments have been adopted in response to the SJC's decision in Matter of Olchowski, 485 Mass. 807 (2020). In Olchowski, the SJC concluded that the disposition of unidentified or unclaimed trust funds held in an IOLTA account is not governed by the Massachusetts abandoned property statute, G. L. c. 200A. Instead, the court decided that such funds should be transferred to the IOLTA Committee for disposition, and it directed the SJC Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct to propose amended rules regarding when and how these transfers should be made. The Standing Advisory Committee in turn published two successive draft proposals for which it sought and received public comments before making a final proposal to the SJC that incorporated changes responsive to a number of the public comments.

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