We provide knowledgeable counsel to fiduciaries, beneficiaries and others on all aspects of estate, trust and fiduciary litigation, including estate and trust disputes and actions focused on alleged breaches of fiduciary duties. Because a certain category of these disputes involve family members and longstanding personal interconnections, success may hinge upon the sensitive implementation of well-planned strategies tailored to a client’s best interests.
Our capable and experienced trial attorneys regularly help clients successfully address:
- Will contests
- Trust disputes
- Trust and will construction actions over the meaning of an instrument or identity of a beneficiary
- Breach of fiduciary duty claims
- Undue influence claims
- Actions taken by agents under powers of attorney
- Accounting actions
- Disputes involving business valuation, control and duties of loyalty
- Challenges to investment decisions and results
- Cy pres/trust modification and trust reformation actions
- Guardianship and conservatorship actions
- Disputes over gifts to charitable organizations, charitable trusts and foundations
Our team possesses years of involvement in highly contested, complex high-stakes estate and trust litigation. We are intimately familiar with the unique procedures, rules and court systems involved in these cases.
Core Practice and Clients
Our clients include corporations, corporate executives, individual and corporate fiduciaries, high net worth individuals and their estates and all types of charitable entities and foundations. In addition to effectively representing clients in large and complex court proceedings, we also employ personalized and thorough planning to advise clients on risk mitigation, litigation avoidance and performance of fiduciary obligations in order to accomplish client objectives.
Representative Matters
- Represented a charitable beneficiary that was not expressly named in the testamentary document to secure a disputed multimillion-dollar devise.
- Represented a charitable income beneficiary to creatively revise how a charitable trust managed complex and valuable real estate assets to begin producing an ongoing and significant revenue stream.
- Represented the trustee of a high-profile entertainer’s estate to resolve multiple challenges to the validity of the decedent’s estate plan.
- Represented the trustee of an internationally known medical maintenance trust to assess the prudency of trust investments and pursue damages caused by improperly invested trust assets.
- Represented the trustee of a charitable trust managing a significant real estate property to modify and terminate trust provisions that had become impracticable and wasteful because of changed circumstances.
- Defended the validity of will and trust provisions providing millions of dollars to our charitable client against claims of undue influence, duress and lack of capacity.
- Defending a large group of medical professionals who exercised a valid right to end their affiliation with one health care provider against allegations they breached various duties and conspired with their new employer to unlawfully procure trade secrets and proprietary information.
