Susan works with clients in various industries and specializes in sophisticated tax and estate planning, drafting, and implementation for high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, including real estate investors, entrepreneurs and managers, art collectors, professionals, athletes, members of multinational families, tech entrepreneurs, and business owners in traditional and emerging industries and technologies.

Susan advises individuals, families, corporate fiduciaries, and privately held companies on issues involving:
 

•    Inter-generational wealth planning, implementing sophisticated tax structures and transfer tax planning techniques

•    Income tax planning with trusts and other entities with a focus on minimization of state income taxes

•    Business succession planning and governance

•    Entity formation, governance and management

•    Estate and tax planning for non-U.S. individuals and cross-border families

•    Cross-border and multi-jurisdictional domestic estate administration

•    Pre-immigration planning and property ownership strategies

•    Representation of fiduciaries and beneficiaries in the administration of trusts and estates and in litigation

•    Family office matters and coordination among the client’s accountants, asset managers, and other professionals

•    Charitable giving arrangements, including trusts (CRTs, CLATs), donor-advised funds, and private foundations

•    Private trust companies

•    Guardianships

•    Distribution planning for IRAs and qualified plans

•    Insurance planning 

•    Gifting strategies for cryptocurrencies, NFTs and similar assets

•    Trust decanting, situs change and modification 

 

Susan also advises clients on tax, trust, and property issues relevant to divorces and separations and drafts pre- and post-nuptial agreements, and is a trained mediator with a focus on resolving intra-family and inter-generational conflicts through mediation. 

 

She has over 30 years of large firm experience, having been counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP, and a partner in Blank Rome, LLP and Pryor Cashman LLP. 

Industry Recognition

Susan has been an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where she taught courses on generation-skipping transfer tax, and at St. John’s University School of Law, where she taught courses on drafting wills and trusts. She has written articles for various publications, including the New York Law Journal and the University of Miami Philip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning. She has also authored and co-authored several chapters of Murphy’s Will Clauses and wrote a chapter in an Aspatore publication for NY trusts and estates planners about the importance of trusts in estate planning.
Susan has been a lecturer, panelist, and moderator at various venues, including Strafford, The California Bar Association, STEP, the American Bar Association, the Knowledge Group, and the Practicing Law Institute, and has presented to various groups, including attorneys, accountants, clients and their advisers, women investors and entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs in the healthy living space.

 

Susan was named a "Best Lawyer" for 2024.

Pro Bono and Community

 

Susan is the chair of the Education Subcommittee of the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Animals and the Law (COAL), and is responsible for organizing content for its CLE programs, including most recently programs with foreign attorney speakers who discussed animal law in Canada and the UK and a four-hour program on Avian Law., which covered a wide variety of topics relevant to birds and the legal protections for them. She also moderated the Committee's recent program on Pet Trusts.  (These are on demand programs, available from the NYSBA's website.)  She is an active member of the New York City Bar Association’s Animal Law Committee, recently hosting a podcast interview with attorneys from the Nonhuman Rights Project available on the NYCBA's website) and is dedicated to protecting animal welfare generally, with a particular focus on animal agriculture. She serves as volunteer counsel to The Animal Defense Partnership, providing pro bono counsel to it and to the animal welfare organizations it serves. She is also pro bono counsel to Ruff House Rescue, Inc., a Long Island and Texas animal rescue organization, advising them on a range of issues including tax, litigation and governance, as well as the Linnaean Society, assisting them with corporate and tax advice.

She has worked on numerous pro bono projects over many years, including, most recently: filing amicus briefs in the Happy the Elephant habeas corpus litigation supporting the Nonhuman Rights Project in its appeal to the NY Court of Appeals, seeking personhood for Happy and her release from the Bronx Zoo to an elephant sanctuary; working on an election project providing voting rights protections; acting as mediator or counsel for low-income New York City residents seeking divorces with the help of the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG); providing assistance to Holocaust survivors seeking compensation for work performed in Nazi Germany; and assisting an indigent with the appeal of his sentence for a drug-related parole violation.
 

Susan has served as a member of The New York City Planned Giving Advisory Council of the American Cancer Society, which provides expert consultation to the gift planning professionals at ACS regarding estate planning, charitable planned giving and related matters, and the education of donors in various estate planning matters.
 

Susan is an avid scuba diver and traveler, and loves yoga and Latin, ballroom, and West Coast Swing dancing.  She is a nature and wildlife lover who enjoys gardening, bird-watching and hiking.  Susan has loved astronomy and stargazing since she was a little girl, and during COVID took classes at the Vanderbilt Museum on Long Island which were the equivalent of a college astronomy course.  Having a strong academic background in Chemistry, she has maintained her interests in the latest medicinal and biomedical research.  Susan is also the joyful (and busy) owner of two wonderful companion dogs (one a rescue from client Ruff House Rescue). 

Education

•    New York University School of Law (LL.M., Taxation) 
•    St. John's University School of Law (J.D.)
•    Queens College of the City University of New York (B.A.)

Bar Admissions

•    New York
•    New Jersey

Professional Affiliations

•    The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP)
•    American Bar Association
•    New York State Bar Association
•    New York City Bar Association
 

Languages

•    French
•    German