Barbara works with individual clients to tailor their estate plans to accomplish their objectives. She offers options for individuals, couples and families to develop strategies to best transfer assets in productive and successful ways. Barbara also serves as executor and trustee for clients in need of professional fiduciary services. In her role as counsel or fiduciary, Barbara is often asked to be a trusted advisor to her clients on a variety of estate planning issues such as business succession planning, charitable giving, estate, gift and income tax minimization, and asset protection strategies.
Barbara also represents both individual and corporate executors and trustees in estate settlement and trust administration matters. She assists those clients serving as executor by navigating probate and the estate administration process in an economical manner, but with the required attention to detail. Barbara advises her trustee clients on a variety of trust administration matters, including trust construction issues, distribution decisions, and trust terminations. Barbara also represents individuals and corporate fiduciaries and beneficiaries in estate, trust and other fiduciary disputes, often in probate court. In those matters, she calls upon her many years of experience crafting estate plans and administering estates and trusts to help reach reasonable resolutions to often emotionally charged legal actions. Barbara also often assists clients in a variety of uncontested matters in probate court.She also represents nonprofit organizations as beneficiaries of estates and trusts, as well as when serving as trustee of trusts, and also helps nonprofit organization structure gifts to properly comply with the donors’ wishes on the restricted use of funds.
Barbara listens to her clients, to determine their goals and concerns, and structures her advice and the accompanying legal documents to meet those goals. Each estate plan is crafted for the client in mind and intended to be as streamlined as possible to be clear to the client.
