The territory can expect to attend the Economic Development Authority’s Estate Planning Conference Tuesday on both St. Croix and St. Thomas and receive a great deal of information on how to manage one’s assets.
The event is being conducted through the Enterprise Zone Commission and was originally scheduled for Sept. 18. Now, rescheduled for Tuesday, interested persons can receive answers and detailed information to many questions surrounding estate planning. Those who attend can expect to hear conversations about wills, trusts, and the role estate planning plays in preserving property.
Since 2010, the EZC has hosted estate planning conferences to reduce the number of vacant buildings within the enterprise zones.

“The Economic Development Authority through the Enterprise Zone Commission has been doing this for the last fifteen to eighteen years. However, this will be the last for a while,” said Nadine Marchena-Kean, the managing director of the Enterprise Zone Commission.
According to Marchena-Kean, the EZC has been able to conduct the estate planning conference for the last four years through a grant from the Department of the Interior. Now that the grant is ending, the estate planning conference will not be happening again “for a while.”
Marchena Kean added that the purpose of the estate planning conferences allows for the rebuilding of the community.
“We are doing this because as we go through the zones, we see that there’s lots of buildings that appear to be abandoned. So in looking into the ownerships of the buildings we found that there were multiple owners over multiple generations that are potential heirs to these buildings, and lack of proper estate planning had not been completed,” she said. “There’s so many different owners that they don’t know how to go about dealing with it.”
On St. Croix, the event will be held at the University of the Virgin Islands Great Hall at the Albert A. Sheen Campus. On St. Thomas, it will be held at Muse Meetings & Events on Waterfront. The event will occur simultaneously at both locations from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Interested persons must register by phone by contacting the VIEDA office on St. Thomas at 340-714-1700 or on St. Croix at 340-773-6499, or online at https://usvieda.org/2025/10/21/ezc-estate-planning-conference/. In-person and online access is available.

“This is a critical moment in our history. We as a people need to move forward to build wealth amongst the people of the Virgin Islands,” said Marchena Kean. “[It] really means you can build wealth if you hand it off to the next person and not create family infighting. We need to rise as a people.”
When asked if estate planning is easily accessible for the average person, Marchena Kean replied, “I think the average person will be able to do something.”
She used the example of owning a car and having an only child, expecting the car to be passed down generationally to that child after loss of life. However, problems arise without proper estate planning.
“If somebody owns a car and they pass, you can’t just say because you only had one child and the car is going to go to that child anyway, that you can just leave it like that. Because in truth you can’t register a car if the car is not in your name,” said Marchena Kean. “The car must go through probate. There is a simple form you can fill out that can take you to the next step,” she added.
Additionally, Marchena Kean highlighted that the conference will provide an understanding of where to begin with estate planning.
“I think the conference will provide your first step,” said Marchena Kean. “A lot of people have come to these conferences and their main question is where do I start?” She added that, “It may seem like it’s difficult, but it’s easy first steps.”
Legal experts and members from the Office of the Lieutenant Governor will be there to answer questions. The managing director said there will also be a special tool introduced that was created to assist in estate planning and there will be feedback from individuals involved in a pilot program to assist families with the process.
More information about the estate planning conference can be retrieved by contacting ezc@usvieda.org or by phone at the phone numbers referenced.

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. lauded staff at the departments of Finance and Human Services for sending out checks to more than 10,000 households across the territory amid a pause in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits caused by a shutdown of the federal government, which began last month.
“You worked through the nights — literally through the night and weekend,” he said during a Government House press briefing Monday. “We had people up until 2:30 in the morning trying to get these checks out so our friends, our neighbors and our families would not go without.”
Bryan said the U.S. Virgin Islands was one of only five states, plus the District of Columbia, to use local funds to cover the shortfall in assistance for lower-income households.
Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have continued to spar over elements of a federal spending bill, and the federal government entered its 34th day of an ongoing shutdown Monday, which effectively halted federal assistance programs like SNAP. The V.I. Human Services Department urged local food stamp recipients to “plan ahead, budget carefully, and conserve current benefits during this uncertain period.” Bryan announced two weeks ago that his administration would tap into the government’s “rainy day” fund to provide SNAP recipients with assistance for the first half of November, and the 36th Legislature approved an emergency $2.77 million appropriation last week.
At least 25 states sued the Trump administration over the funding freeze, and on Monday the administration told a federal judge from the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts that it will use $4.6 billion from the program’s contingency funds to cover SNAP households for half of November. Bryan said during Monday’s briefing that he hoped the federal assistance would come through.
“We got a lot of people out here working hard and still getting food stamps,” he said. “Maybe they have a bunch of kids, maybe their husband or their wife left them, and maybe they have somebody sick in their family that’s draining their finances. Maybe they’re old and they can’t work. I mean it’s like … we have this vision in our heads that it’s only people who live in the projects that don’t do nothing that get food stamps. If you take a drive through any of our housing communities in the day, there’s no cars. Those are working people. People live in public housing in the Virgin Islands, for the most part, because the rent is treacherous and they have families — so we’re doing our best to help and address everybody we can during this time.”
Bryan said checks were sent out to 10,603 households, benefiting approximately 29,000 people in the territory.