• Who will care for your children if you die?

• Who will make medical decisions for you if you are unable to do so?

• Who will attend to your affairs if you are incapacitated?

• Who will inherit your hard-earned money and property when you die?

• If you do not make these decisions, the government may make them for you.

Our attorneys are also experienced in handling:

• will contests (against wills signed under duress, undue influence or fraud or against forged wills);

• disputes over funeral rights;

• power of attorney abuse (self dealing or theft with a power of attorney); and

• mismanagement of estates (waste of assets or refusal to distribute property.

The firm is equipped to handle, and often prevent, these difficult sad issues that may present themselves as a result of death. By way of example:

• The firm can assist with disputes, or anticipated disputes, over emotional issues involving funeral arrangements. In this regard, there can be disputes over who is permitted by law to make the funeral arrangements.

For example, when a grandson lost his beloved grandmother, not only did he have to cope with the grief of her passing, but also the legal feud that ensued with another relative over the right of burial. This other relative had taken control of the grandmother’s body, at an undisclosed location, and arranged for the decedent's burial without even consulting the grandson. This relative refused to compromise. An attorney at the firm secured a court order granting the grandson the right to bury his grandmother with the respect she deserved.

• The firm can assist with the investigation of suspicious asset transfers and initiate appropriate litigation or other actions. Sometimes an infirm person's assets or his or her estate can fall under the control of an untrustworthy person. Sometimes there is outright fraud.

For example, having just lost her 92 year old mother, her daughter, who was our client, was shocked to learn that the decedent's life savings had been cleaned out by greedy neighbors who had been "assisting" the deceased with a power of attorney. Staff at the firm worked through the night preparing legal papers for a court order freezing funds held by the errant neighbors and summoning them to appear before a New York State Supreme Court Justice. The neighbors ultimately surrendered all of the money they improperly obtained due to the firm's work, establishing that their self-dealing with the decedent's power of attorney was illegal and that the purported change in beneficiary of a bank account was ineffective under the laws applying to banks.

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Prior Results Do Not Guarantee A Similar Outcome