251-217-9733
Probate, Trust and Fiduciary Litigation
When an estate, a trust, or a family business becomes the thing everyone is arguing about.
What These Disputes Involve
Probate, trust, and fiduciary litigation covers disputes over the administration of estates and trusts (challenges to a will, disagreements about how a trust is being run, and claims that someone holding a position of trust has failed in their duties).
The people holding those positions are frequently family members. An executor, a trustee, a personal representative, or an attorney-in-fact operates under real legal obligations (of loyalty, of prudence, of accounting) and most are appointed because they were trusted rather than because they knew what the role required.
What makes these disputes distinct is that they are rarely only about money. They are usually about a relationship that has already broken, with a legal claim attached to it. That affects how they are best resolved, and it is why litigating them like a commercial dispute frequently makes things worse.
Disputes We Handle
Will contests
Challenges based on capacity, undue influence, execution, or fraud (brought and defended).
Trust disputes
Interpretation, administration, distribution disagreements, and removal of trustees.
Breach of fiduciary duty
Claims against executors, trustees, personal representatives, and attorneys-in-fact.
Accounting disputes
Compelling an accounting, and defending one that has been challenged.
Estate administration disputes
Disagreements arising during probate administration between beneficiaries and representatives.
Business ownership within an estate
Where the estate holds a company and control, valuation, and continuity are all contested at once.
Undue influence claims
Frequently involving a late-life change of documents and a family member who was close by.
Removal and replacement
Where a fiduciary must be removed and someone else appointed.
Sound familiar?
How We Approach These
Work out what is actually in dispute
Frequently the legal claim is a proxy for something older. Identifying the real disagreement early is what makes resolution possible; litigating the stated claim alone often does not.
Protect the asset while arguing about it
Where a business or property sits inside the estate, it keeps needing to be run. A dispute that damages the asset leaves everyone worse off, including whoever wins.
Push toward resolution
These cases are unusually well suited to mediation, and unusually damaging when they are not resolved. Two of our attorneys are certified mediators, which informs how we approach settlement.
Who Does This Work
Robert J. Riccio
Estate planning, trusts, fiduciary disputes, and tax-exempt organizations, with an LL.M. in taxation and a CPA qualification behind the valuation and accounting questions these cases turn on.
Jordan W Gerheim
The litigation and business side (ownership, control, and valuation disputes where a company sits inside an estate).
William R. Lancaster
Trial experience and a mediation practice, in a category of dispute that benefits from both.
When the Family Business Is the Estate
For a large share of business owners, the company is the estate. It is the retirement, the inheritance, and the thing several people's livelihoods depend on, and when the owner dies without a clear plan, all of that becomes contested at once.
Who controls the company now
Governing documents, the will, and the operating reality frequently point in three different directions.
What it is worth
Valuation drives everything, and beneficiaries who work in the business and beneficiaries who do not will value it very differently.
Whether it keeps operating
The business needs decisions daily while the dispute runs for months. Paralysis destroys value that nobody recovers.
Fairness between heirs
The child who worked in it for twenty years and the child who did not are rarely satisfied by the same answer.
How These Matters Are Billed
Want a number for your situation?
Related Services
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we challenge a will?
Sometimes, on grounds including lack of capacity, undue influence, improper execution, or fraud. The deadlines are short and they begin running on events in the probate process rather than on when you learned something concerning, so if something looks wrong, the time to ask about it is now rather than after the estate has been administered.
I am an executor and beneficiaries are accusing me of things. What now?
Get advice, and start with the accounting. Most claims against executors and trustees arise from poor communication and incomplete records rather than from actual wrongdoing (beneficiaries who are told nothing tend to assume the worst). A proper accounting resolves a substantial share of these disputes before they become claims.
What does breach of fiduciary duty actually mean?
That someone in a position of trust (an executor, trustee, personal representative, or attorney-in-fact) failed in the duties that position carries. Those include loyalty to the beneficiaries, prudent management, keeping estate property separate from their own, and accounting for what they have done. Many breaches are careless rather than dishonest, which affects remedy but not liability.
The estate owns a business and nobody agrees who runs it. What happens?
It depends on the governing documents, the will, and how ownership was actually structured, and those three frequently conflict. Meanwhile the business needs decisions daily. Getting an interim arrangement in place early is usually more important than winning the underlying argument quickly, because a paralysed business loses value nobody gets back.
Could this have been prevented?
Usually, yes, with a buy-sell agreement, a succession plan, and documents that matched the family's actual intentions. That is not a useful answer if you are already in the dispute, but it is the reason we point people toward Succession Planning before they need this page.
Related Insights
These Disputes Get More Expensive the Longer They Run
Book a Risk-Free Strategy Session. Send us the will, the trust, or the accounting and we will read it before we speak.