Trust & Estate Litigation

Maslon's Trust & Estate Litigation attorneys help high net worth individuals and sophisticated institutions protect their interests in disputes involving significant assets.

With decades of experience representing trustees, personal representatives, professional fiduciaries, family offices, heirs, beneficiaries, and charities, we know that wealth disputes are about more than money. They often encompass deeply emotional issues that can divide families or interfere with a personal representative or trustee's ability to administer the trust or estate. That is why Maslon's team looks for creative solutions to help clients avoid protracted litigation, contain costs, and preserve their important relationships.

As a first line of defense, we partner with our estate planning attorneys—among the region’s most preeminent—to ensure our clients have estate plans that will maximize their wealth and bring about their desired legacies. When questions or disputes regarding the administration of an estate or trust arise, we aim for swift resolution by leveraging alternative dispute resolution when possible and litigation when necessary. We have helped clients embroiled in complex trust and estate litigation achieve success on their terms through mediation, arbitration, and trial, as well as on appeal.

Our expertise includes the following:

• Will and trust contests. Disputes regarding whether a person’s will or trust reflects their wishes, including disagreements about the meaning or validity of a will or trust, and questions about testamentary capacity, undue influence, coercion, fraud, mistake, or duress. These claims often arise if there are concerns about diminished capacity.
• Inheritance disputes. Conflicts involving siblings, step-parents, or estranged family members over the ultimate disposition of estates and trusts.
• Wealth transfer disputes. Disagreements about transfers of wealth from one generation to the next, whether involving land, closely held family businesses, investments, or philanthropy.
• Contested probate matters. Disputes among heirs or other beneficiaries involving distributions from a deceased person's estate.
• Elective share and homestead election disputes. Disputes brought by surviving spouses regarding their statutory rights to a decedent’s estate.
• Financial exploitation. Conflicts around alleged exploitation of a vulnerable adult and their trust or estate.
• Business succession conflicts. Disputes arising upon, or as a result of, the transfer of control or ownership of a business, including “business divorces.”
• Farm and cabin disputes. Disputes among family members involving the sale of farmland or over ownership and use of a family cabin.
• Trust petition proceedings. Actions to resolve trust disputes.
• Trust instruction proceedings. Actions used by trustees to obtain judicial approval of discretionary actions not clearly provided for in the governing trust documents.
• Breach of fiduciary duty. Litigation stemming from alleged conflicts of interest, improper investments, failure to act in the best interest of beneficiaries, or trustee embezzlement from a trust, including trustee removal and surcharge actions.
• Charitable, religious, and nonprofit litigation. Disputes involving challenges by heirs to charitable bequests and other inheritance conflicts, including those involving alleged undue influence.
• Guardianship, conservatorship, and lack of capacity matters. Contested guardianships/conservatorships, challenges to a guardian's authority, allegations of fraud or duress.

Maslon’s Trust & Estate Litigation attorneys hold leadership roles in the foremost professional organizations in the field locally and nationally, including the Minnesota State Bar Association Probate, Trusts and Estate Section and the American Bar Association Real Property, Trust, and Estate Section. Three Maslon trust and estate attorneys have been named fellows of the prestigious American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC).

Our good work for clients—paired with our commitment to the profession, leading role in shaping case law and trust legislation, and engagement in regular thought leadership—have contributed to our reputation as one of the leading firms in the Midwest for complex trust and estate litigation.