Overview
Clients entrust their most important personal and family matters – including will contests, trust contests, breach of fiduciary duty actions, and all other kinds of trust and estate disputes – to the attorneys of the Probate & Fiduciary Litigation Group of Goulston & Storrs. Our reputation and experience in this area and our professional, responsive approach to client-service during these uniquely challenging, frequently once-in-a-lifetime events allow clients to turn to us with confidence. Sometimes that means representing clients in litigation, giving them their day in court if necessary. Sometimes that means counseling clients on how to achieve their goals short of litigation, or how to avoid litigation through creative approaches to settlement.
Our lawyers are at the forefront of developing this area of the law. The Massachusetts Probate and Family Court has turned to us for advice on the creation of the specialized Fiduciary Litigation Session for complicated estate and trust matters and on new procedures for trust reformation actions. We have taken leadership roles in the Probate Law Section of the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Trusts and Estate Section of the Boston Bar Association, the Boston Probate and Estate Planning Forum, and the Greater Boston Fiduciary Law American Inn of Court, among other bar organizations. In New York, we have been on the cutting edge of using Article 77 for expedited trust proceedings in the Supreme Court.
With one of the largest, most well-established trust and estate practices on the East Coast, our attorneys include bar association leaders and six fellows of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), which is composed exclusively of lawyers and law professors from around the world who have been elected by their peers based on reputation, skill, and contributions to the field in the form of lecturing, writing, teaching, and bar activities. One of our attorneys, recently appointed to ACTEC’s Fiduciary Litigation Committee, has earned recognition in the private wealth section of the 2019 Chambers High Net Worth Guide, which cited clients who praise his creativity, strategy and communication skills. The 2017 Chambers publication also cited a source who called him “Boston’s pre-eminent probate litigator.” Chambers USA has also consistently ranked our entire practice as top tier since their High Net Worth Guide was first published in 2016.
One final point of distinction for our group is that when a dispute over trust or estate property involves real estate, as it often does, we can draw upon the resources of our nationally renowned Real Estate Group.
As a result of these distinctions, we are fortunate to represent many individuals, institutions and different types of fiduciaries, including the clients of other lawyers, financial planners, wealth managers, accountants and sophisticated professionals from around the country who rely on our trustworthiness and competence when they refer those valued clients to us. See “Our Clients” for more information about the parties we represent.