A client once came to my office after his father, a successful Brooklyn restaurant owner, died without a will. The father had always been clear
A client’s mother, living in her Upper East Side apartment for forty years, had a sudden fall. She was lucid, but her recovery would be
A client wants to transfer her Manhattan co-op into a revocable living trust. Her brother, a real estate agent in another state, suggests a simple
When a partner in a professional firm—law, accounting, or medicine—passes away, their family faces a difficult question: What was their stake in the business actually
When an unmarried couple purchases a brownstone in Brooklyn, they rarely pause to consider the generational impact of their closing documents. They sign the paperwork,
A 32-year-old software engineer buys her first condo in Brooklyn. She has no spouse and no children. Does she need a will? Most people in
I recently sat with a couple in their Brooklyn home—a brownstone they’d owned for 40 years. They had raised their children there, celebrated milestones, and
I recently met with three siblings who had inherited their parents’ brownstone in Brooklyn. One lived in the city and wanted to keep the home.
When a Manhattan family loses a parent who relied entirely on a simple will, the next nine to fifteen months belong to Surrogate’s Court. While
When a parent passes away, the family is left to manage both grief and a list of practical duties. One of the most common is
A client once came into my Manhattan office with a will he was quite proud of. It was professionally drafted, signed, and witnessed. The problem?
A client called my office from California last week. His mother had recently passed away in her Brooklyn home, where she had lived for fifty
A brownstone in Park Slope, a small business in Williamsburg, and three adult children who don’t agree on the future. When the last parent passes
A client recently sat across from my desk, holding a thick folder of past-due mortgage notices and utility bills. Her father had died suddenly a
A Manhattan businessman spends forty years building a commercial real estate portfolio, painstakingly transferring the deeds of his properties into a revocable living trust to
I often meet clients who believe their assets are too straightforward for a will. Consider a young couple in Manhattan with a new baby, a
I once met with a couple from Brooklyn who had done what they thought was enough. They had downloaded a will template and named the
An elderly mother living alone in her Manhattan apartment suddenly has a new “best friend”—a neighbor who now takes her to all her appointments, answers
A few years ago, we met with the adult children of a successful contractor from Suffolk County. Their father had built a significant business from
A family from Brooklyn calls my office. Their father, a retired architect who was sharp until the very end, passed away. The will they knew
A family in Brooklyn Heights loses a parent unexpectedly. Amid the grief, they discover there is no will, no trust—no instructions at all. Many people
A new client recently came to our Manhattan office with a stack of papers printed from a popular legal website. He was proud. For a
I once met with a family from Brooklyn whose mother, a retired professor, had begun making alarming financial decisions. Large, uncharacteristic checks were being written
The judge in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court has finally signed the decree settling your family’s estate. After months—sometimes years—of waiting, the probate process is officially over.
When a Brooklyn family sits at my conference table and announces they want to sign their brownstone over to their children to “get it out
A client recently came to my Manhattan office with a thick binder containing a trust her parents created in 1995. It was a prudent move
An elderly parent is in a long-term care facility in Manhattan, and the costs are mounting. The family’s only remaining liquid asset is a whole
A client came to my office last month with what he thought was a simple plan. His mother, living in her paid-off Brooklyn home for
A client recently came into our Manhattan office after his mother passed away in her Brooklyn home. He was the executor of her will and
A client came to my office a few years ago with a common problem. She was a widow in her late 70s, living in the
