Practice areas
What this office does
Two related practices. Most of the work is protecting a family and a lifetime of work — settling an estate, and arranging things so the same ground does not have to be covered twice. The second is criminal defence, which is a different discipline and is listed separately.
- Estates & planning
- Six connected practice areas
- Defence
- Criminal law in Queens and Nassau
- Areas served
- Queens, New York, Brooklyn, New York, Nassau County, New York, New York City
Estates, planning and elder law
Six areas that have to be considered together
Documents drafted in isolation tend to work against each other. The value here is taking them as one problem rather than six.
- Surrogate’s CourtProbateProbating a will and administering a New York estate from end to end.Read about this
- After the will is acceptedEstate AdministrationThe practical work of settling an estate: assets, debts, taxes, distributions.Read about this
- PlanningWills & TrustsDocuments that decide who inherits, who decides, and when.Read about this
- Court proceedingsGuardianshipWhen someone can no longer make decisions safely for themselves.Read about this
- Long-term care & MedicaidElder LawPlanning for care costs before they arrive, not after.Read about this
- Decide in advancePower of Attorney & Health Care ProxyChoose who acts for you financially and medically — while you still can.Read about this
Separate practice
Criminal defence
Having prosecuted cases in Queens County from 1978 to 1981, Richard knows how a case is built from the other side and where it is vulnerable. Criminal defence has its own deadlines, its own court, and its own consequences, and treating it as an appendix to estate work would misrepresent both.
Criminal Defense: what this involvesChoosing
Where a matter actually sits
People usually do not arrive with a practice area. They arrive with a situation: somebody died, somebody cannot manage, somebody is worried about a house, or somebody was arrested. Those situations map onto practice areas, but not always cleanly.
Someone whose parent has died and whose sibling is the named executor may need probate. The same family may also need a will, a power of attorney, and help with a co-op that has to be dealt with. The honest answer is often “a bit of each”, and the work is in establishing the proportions.
Start from your situation insteadWhat is genuinely separate
The estate, planning and elder law work is one connected body of practice: documents that interact, decisions that must be made together, and a planning horizon that runs from the present to the administration of an estate decades from now.
Criminal defence is different in kind. Different court, different timetable, different stakes, and a different body of law. Richard keeps them separate and describes them separately, because merging them would be easier to sell and less honest to describe.
All areas
Every practice area
- Surrogate’s CourtProbateProbating a will and administering a New York estate from end to end.Read about this
- After the will is acceptedEstate AdministrationThe practical work of settling an estate: assets, debts, taxes, distributions.Read about this
- PlanningWills & TrustsDocuments that decide who inherits, who decides, and when.Read about this
- Court proceedingsGuardianshipWhen someone can no longer make decisions safely for themselves.Read about this
- Long-term care & MedicaidElder LawPlanning for care costs before they arrive, not after.Read about this
- Decide in advancePower of Attorney & Health Care ProxyChoose who acts for you financially and medically — while you still can.Read about this
- Queens criminal courtSeparate practiceCriminal DefenseRepresentation for people accused of crimes in Queens and Nassau.Discuss a charge
Next step
Tell me what is happening, rather than which box it fits in.
Most enquiries are easier to place once someone has heard them described out loud. That is the whole purpose of the first conversation.