You’ve found your father’s original will, and he named you as the executor. It’s a position of tremendous trust, but the document itself has no
A client once came to my office after his mother passed away in her Manhattan apartment. He and his sister were the only heirs, the
I recently sat with a couple from Manhattan who were reviewing the first draft of their estate plan. They pointed to two different pages. “Russel,”
A son in Manhattan is named executor of his father’s will. His sister, who lives in California, starts calling every week. “Did you sell the
Last year, I sat across from three adult siblings from Suffolk County. Their father had passed away suddenly, and his entire life—a successful contracting business,
A client once called our office about her late father, a retired transit worker in Queens. He didn’t own property, and she believed he had
A client came to see me last week. She lives in the same Brooklyn brownstone her parents bought in the 1970s and wants to ensure
I often meet with new clients who believe their job is done once they’ve signed a simple will. They think they’ve left an inheritance. In
A few years ago, a new client came to our Manhattan office with a will he’d downloaded from an online legal-form website for a flat
When a Manhattan family loses a parent, the discovery of a neatly typed will in a desk drawer often brings a false sense of finality.
A client once told me his three children were all smart and successful, so picking one to be his trustee would be simple. A year
A mother passes away in Brooklyn, leaving her beloved brownstone to her three adult children in her will. For them, it’s more than a building—it’s
A client recently came to our firm from his family home in Brooklyn, holding his mother’s original will. He was named the executor—the person responsible
The call comes on a Tuesday morning. A friend, his voice hollow, tells you his wife is gone. An accident. A sudden illness. In that
When a Manhattan family with two commercial properties and an $8 million brokerage account sits down to review their estate, the conversation often begins with
Every few years, an executive sits across the desk in our Madison Avenue office and asks a variation of the same question. Usually, it starts
I’ve seen it happen more than once. A family arrives from Brooklyn with a will their father downloaded from a website for twenty dollars. He
A client’s son recently called my office from Brooklyn. His mother had passed away, and he was trying to access her iCloud account to retrieve
A client from Queens sat in my office last week. He wanted to give his paid-off house to his daughter. “I want her to have
When a surviving spouse in Brooklyn passes away holding the deed to a four-story brownstone exclusively in her own name, her children often assume transferring
When a Long Island family sits across from my desk holding a three-inch stack of their late mother’s medical bills, utility shut-off notices, and credit
An executor for a Manhattan co-op has just received the final appraisal report. The art, the brokerage account, the tangible property—everything has a value assigned
A client recently sat in my office, the original copy of her mother’s will on the table between us. She had been named the executor,
A client recently came to our Manhattan office after her father passed away. As the newly appointed successor trustee, she went to his bank to
A Manhattan executive suffers a severe medical event on a Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, his spouse realizes she cannot access his individual brokerage accounts, cannot
A client recently told me about his father’s probate. The process dragged on for nearly two years in Surrogate’s Court, and every month, another legal
A client from Brooklyn called me last week. Her father had passed, and his will named her as the executor of his estate. After a
I once had a client, a brilliant founder of a successful Manhattan advertising agency, who named her brother as the executor of her will. It
A client called me last week from Suffolk County. His mother had recently passed, leaving him her manufactured home in a quiet community. He assumed
A construction worker from Queens receives a seven-figure settlement after a fall on the job. The money is life-changing, intended to cover a lifetime of
