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The distinguishing strength of Levenfeld Pearlstein’s trust and estate litigation services lies in the close collaboration between the Litigation Practice Group and the Asset Planning & Preservation Service Group. Representation in trust and estate litigation requires a unique combination of knowledge and experience in trust and estate law, administration of complex trusts and estates, probate procedure, estate taxation, civil litigation and trial practice. The depth of our litigation experience in these areas, enhanced with the broad knowledge and experience of our Asset Planning & Preservation attorneys in Chicago and Northbrook, make our litigation services to trust and estate fiduciaries, beneficiaries and other interested parties a prominent component of our firm’s Litigation Practice Group.
Whether in private mediation or arbitration, or in court, our services cover a wide range of circumstances in which skilled and aggressive advocacy is needed, including the following:
- Will and Trust contests (lack of capacity or undue influence)
- Trust and estate accounting disputes
- Determination of heirship
- Discovery of estate assets
- Construction of Wills and Trusts
- Property rights disputes
- Trust revocation or reformation
- Valuation disputes
- Removal of fiduciaries
- Tax disputes
Representative Matters
Examples of our successful representation of fiduciaries and beneficiaries in resolving trust and estate disputes, includes the following:
- Representation of a child of the decedent’s second marriage, for whom we obtained full disclosure of irregular and secretive estate administration by estranged step-siblings who had earlier obtained a court order, removing the original executor and appointing themselves as co-administrators of their father’s $5+ million estate.
- Preservation of a high six-figure inheritance for a trust beneficiary’s surviving children, for whom we obtained a favorable interpretation of their grandfather’s Will and successfully excluded testimony of an expert witness proposed by disinherited heirs, whose petition for instructions in interpreting the Will we also defeated.
- Representation of disinherited children and extended family members in separate, unrelated lawsuits, for whom we obtained complete capitulation or settled on favorable terms with other family members who had wrongfully procured bequests in Wills and Trusts by undue influence, or interference with valid inheritance expectancies.
- Preservation of tax exemption qualification of irrevocable insurance trust, where insurance policy beneficiary designations named the trustee in her individual capacity, rather than as trustee.
- Securing an agreement by the trustee of an irrevocable insurance trust to resign as trustee and restore to the trust if necessary, through proceeds of life insurance in his own insurance trust at his death, trust assets in excess of $1 million that he had lost in unsound investments, in breach of his fiduciary obligations.
- Representation of the surviving spouse of a trust grantor for whom we successfully obtained at trial, a court order reforming the trust to name her as successor trustee of his lifetime trust, which had been omitted due to a scrivener’s error.
