Weinstock Manion, A Law Corporation

Focus and practice areas

The firm keeps to one field: what happens to family wealth as it moves between generations. Weinstock Manion handles estate planning, wealth transfer planning, and the administration of estates and trusts after a death. It also takes on estate and trust litigation, business succession planning, and charitable planning that includes family foundations.

These areas connect in practice. A plan drafted in one decade becomes the trust administered in the next, and the same document can turn into a court dispute if the heirs disagree. The firm covers all three stages, so a single client relationship can begin at drafting and continue through administration and any later dispute.

The site describes the firm as a boutique one that works with moderate to high net worth individuals and their families. That description matches the areas on offer, since business succession and charitable foundation work tend to matter most to families with real assets to structure.

Where the firm began

Weinstock Manion dates to 1959, when Harold Weinstock and Brian Manion founded it. By the firm's own account, that puts more than 65 years behind its work in estate planning, estate and trust administration, and litigation.

Harold Weinstock taught as well as practiced. He began teaching estate planning at UCLA Extension in 1965, and in 1977 he published a book on the subject, Planning an Estate: A Guidebook of Principles and Techniques. Brian Manion worked as a business attorney and litigator. He died in 1997, and Harold Weinstock died in December 2014.

The teaching link outlived both founders. The firm says its attorneys still teach estate planning courses at UCLA Extension and other venues. As a reviewer, I read that as a sign the founders' teaching habit carried into the current roster.

How the team is built

The firm lists its people by rank: shareholders, associates, counsel, and paralegals. That structure puts senior owners alongside a supporting bench, a common shape for a firm meant to outlast any one lawyer. The firm names its full team publicly, which gives a directory reader a sense of the depth behind the founding partners.

Several attorneys hold ownership and management roles. Elizabeth G. Acevedo is a shareholder and director. Jessica G. Babrick, Jonathan S. Forster, and Jeffrey P. Geida each hold the title of shareholder and managing director. Noemi A. Blasutta holds the title of counsel.

The associate ranks include Michael E. Bareket, Corinne L. Adams, Joyce Feuille, Katherine 'Kaity' Hyman, Gladys 'Gigi' M. Kisela, Amy L. Lawrence, and Aubrey E. Lerner.The firm says its team includes attorneys certified in estate planning, trust and probate law, and taxation law. In California, that certification comes from the State Bar and requires a written exam plus a record of qualifying experience.

What estate and trust work involves

Planning and transfers

Estate planning covers the documents that direct where property goes: wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and health care directives. Wealth transfer planning adds tax to that picture, since gifts and inheritances above set federal thresholds carry estate and gift tax consequences. For larger estates, the work can extend to irrevocable trusts, lifetime gifting, and structures that move future growth outside the taxable estate. A married couple often pairs their plans so that assets pass first to the survivor and then to the children, with trusts set up to hold a minor's share until they are older. This is the ground the firm's planning attorneys work on.

Administration and disputes

Administration begins after a death. A trustee or executor gathers assets, pays debts and taxes, and passes what remains to the beneficiaries. Trust administration often stays out of probate court, while an estate without a living trust usually goes through the county probate process. The executor also files a final income tax return for the person who died, and, for a large enough estate, a federal estate tax return within nine months. Missing those deadlines can create penalties, which is one reason families bring in counsel early.

Litigation starts when someone contests that process. A will challenge, a claim that a trustee mishandled assets, or a fight over what a document means goes before the probate court. These cases can settle through mediation or run to a trial before a probate judge, and they often turn on the paper trail: the drafting notes, the medical records from around the signing, and the trustee's accountings. Weinstock Manion takes on these contests along with the planning that precedes them, which lets one firm defend a plan it may have helped write.

Business succession and charitable giving

Two of the firm's named areas reach past the standard will and trust. Business succession planning deals with what happens to a company when its owner retires, steps back, or dies. The work usually involves buy-sell agreements, valuation questions, and a plan for who holds voting control once the founder is gone. For a family business, it runs alongside the owner's personal estate plan, since the two share the same assets. Getting that order wrong can force a sale or split a family, so the planning tends to start years before any handover.

Charitable planning and family foundations handle the giving side of the same estates. A family that wants to give at scale can use a private foundation, a donor-advised fund, or a charitable trust, each with its own tax treatment and filing duties. A private foundation files its own annual return and has to meet a yearly payout requirement. Family foundations also let one generation set the terms of giving and hand the running of it to the next, which keeps the planning and the charity on the same track. Weinstock Manion names both business succession and charitable work among its regular areas, which points to clients whose estates hold more than a house and a retirement account.

What the record shows

The firm's standing comes from two things: a long run in one field and a teaching tradition. It has worked in estate law since 1959, and its founder wrote a guidebook that other planners used for years. In my opinion those are steadier markers than any single case result, because they point to consistency across decades.

The current attorneys carry that tradition forward through the courses they teach at UCLA Extension and other venues.The firm's roster includes attorneys certified in estate planning, trust and probate law, and taxation law, credentials that California grants only after a written exam and a review of experience.