Trust and Estate Litigation
Trust and Estate Litigation [MUSIC PLAYING] Trust and estate litigation is a unique area of practice. It's not a typical lawsuit. The issues involved are generally motivated by not just the question of whether someone is going to inherit money or whether a trust is going to be construed to provide certain benefits or not. The main issue is the emotional content of all these disputes. The concern generally is that unresolved dynamics that were involved in the family for many, many years get played out in the absolute worst circumstances-- when somebody's deceased-- in the absolute worst forum, which is a court of law. And so an attorney needs to be very sensitive to those issues, as well as interested in resolving them in such a way that maintains the family and prevents it from being fractured. The unique aspect of this type of litigation is that it's always in the context of an unfortunate family tragedy, which adds a different dynamic to the representation and the experience that the client is going through. We always endeavored to keep that background in mind and to be sensitive to those issues. And make sure that we're doing the best we can to still advocate for our client and make sure they're getting what they need in their representation, while being sensitive to what they and the other participants in litigation are often going through. There are all sorts of unique issues that arise in trust and estate law. For example, the idea of probable intent, which means that you can have a will that is written in such a way that it's not clear what the person wanted. Or it is clear in a global sense, but the actual legal language that was necessary is not there. The signatures that should've been there as witnesses are not there. There's an internal inconsistency which might be something as simple as a typo. So there's a body of law relating to what's called probable intent. There's also issues relating to elective shares. Elective shares mean that a person cannot disinherit a spouse beyond a certain fraction of their state that is governed by state law. So these elective shares are all different in the different states. They're all governed by different states' legal regimes. But the bottom line is that someone may write a will, think that they're are disinheriting their spouse or reducing the amount of money that their spouse is going to be entitled to. And in fact, that's not what happens, because the statute trumps the will itself. There are also issues relating to trusts. One of the things that lawyers now have seen an explosion of is special needs trust. There are many children who are being born with special needs. The parents need to set up trusts so that if those parents are not around to provide for those kids, and those kids unfortunately might not be able to provide for themselves, that there's some kind of trust in place to help them to make sure that they're taking care of. So it's more than just deciding who would raise your children if you weren't here. Now it's a question of who would also funded that at the same time. All of those things are very, very important and very much integral to the representation of people who are dealing with bereavement, because of an estate issue or people who have needs that are being serviced by a trust. 
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Nissenbaum Law Group LLC