Probate and Fiduciary Litigation

There is no substitute for having an experienced team of lawyers whose practice is devoted to probate and fiduciary litigation and dispute resolution. We will represent your interests in such litigation and in negotiating issues before reaching the point of litigation.

As a part of the largest private wealth practice in the United States, our probate and fiduciary litigation group represents corporate and individual trustees, executors, administrators, guardians and beneficiaries, and has resolved a wide range of trust and estate disputes, including complaints for breach of fiduciary duty, self dealing and conflicts of interest, complaints for instructions, complaints for reformation, complaints for removal of fiduciaries, and will and trust contests. We counsel clients and, if necessary, litigate trust law and estate law issues that arise from the following:

• duties with respect to trust investment and administration
• duties to administer a trust
• duties of loyalty
• duties of impartiality
• duties to segregate trust property
• duties of delegation
• duties of successor trustee with respect to acts of predecessor
• duties to report and account to beneficiaries
• duties regarding claims and actions against estates and trusts
• duties with respect to co-trustees
• remedies for breach of trust and self-dealing
• the appropriate measure of damages
• the availability of punitive damages
• incapacity or lack of competence
• undue influence
• negligent conduct by a fiduciary
• fraudulent conduct by a fiduciary

The Holland & Knight team approach ensures that clients have the benefit of both legal disciplines: the knowledge and experience of seasoned trust, estate and tax practitioners combined with the litigation skills of true trial lawyers. You may rely on our team to deliver efficient, knowledge-based and skilled resolutions.

Representative recent cases, which were successfully resolved with favorable results for our clients, have included:

• representation of multiple individual trustees in trust disputes
• representation of multiple individual beneficiaries in will and trust disputes
• representation of two trustees in a suit alleging failure to diversify a highly concentrated position in stock which had been placed in a GRAT where the claimed damages were over twenty million dollars
• representation of the unborn and unascertained issue of a putative child of a man who died leaving a large trust fund which was to be divided equally into shares for his issue
• representation of a New York trust bank in a dispute with its two individual co-trustees of two trusts collectively valued in excess of one hundred million dollars
• defending a Bank on a claim by the administrator of a decedent's estate that the bank improperly paid out over six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the decedent's fiancée as surviving tenant on certain accounts
• representation of a national financial institution serving as trustee of a funded revocable trust which also will receive the estate of the donor, who is still living but had been declared incompetent by the Court after substantial litigation
• representation of a national financial institution in connection with trusts with concentrated asset holdings
• representation of a national financial institution in litigation by beneficiaries and a co-trustee concerning the institution's investment performance
• defended a large national bank in suits for damages by wealthy well-known beneficiaries
• representation of a major trust bank in will contests
• representation of a large national bank in surcharge litigation