Trust & Estate Dispute Resolution and Litigation is a primary focus of the law firm. Our lawyers represent bank, corporate, and individual trustees in litigation and structured settlements, as well as beneficiaries in will contests, real estate partition matters and disputes with private trustees at the probate, superior and appellate court levels. We have negotiated cases involving the allocation of estate taxes and fiduciary liability, and successfully secured court approval for trust reformations.

Our recent cases have involved a multi-million dollar partner dispute among family members owning limited liability company interests of several large commercial real estate ventures via several sets of trusts resulting in the client buying out the other members in Superior Court in Bristol County, Massachusetts; a will contest in Probate Court and Superior Court in Newport, Rhode Island for an omitted child and frozen embryos; a $5.2 million estate dispute split between Massachusetts and Florida courts, including protecting from creditors a fifty year old $350 million family trust for the corporate bank trustee; defending the last will and testament of a decedent’s will in Barnstable, Massachusetts Probate Court for the primary beneficiary and defeating the new will not properly executed under the statute of wills; litigating a $1.5 million will contest and trust dispute in Bristol County, Massachusetts; reforming three multimillion dollar trusts in Bristol County, Massachusetts to comply with the Massachusetts Uniform Principal and Income Act for the benefit of the lifetime, income beneficiaries; litigating a $2 million contested estate involving a medical malpractice claim in Boston, Massachusetts; obtaining a summary judgment in a dispute in Taunton, Massachusetts over beneficiary designations in a nominee real estate trust; obtaining a trustee removal and dissolution for a client’s $1.2 million trust in Providence, Rhode Island; negotiating a favorable result in a real estate partition matter in Miami, Florida; defending a decedent’s homestead protection against a personal injury claim in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; litigating a contested guardianship and estate tax planning petition and the funding of 529 college funds for grandchildren in Chesapeake, Virginia; settling a $1.1 million will contest in Tucson, Arizona for a Massachusetts client; obtaining a final judgment from the Rhode Island Supreme Court in a matter involving a disgruntled beneficiary who engaged in fifteen years of litigation with no valid claims and who tried to sue the lawyer representing the trustee in the litigation; obtaining a trust reformation for a corporate trustee for a one hundred year old trust for the benefit of the Rhode Island Boy Scouts at Camp Yawgoog; obtaining favorable administrative, Superior Court and Appellate Court decisions in Massachusetts in which the firm’s clients had engaged in various family transactions and prepared trusts consistent with state and federal law that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could not defeat; and protecting from divorce and bankruptcy multiple trusts for various clients.