Weiner Law: Trust, Probate & Litigation Lawyers APC

Focus and practice areas

Trusts, probate, and estate work forms the core of Weiner Law, a California firm that also runs a litigation practice. The published practice list covers probate litigation, trust litigation, and civil litigation. It also covers probate administration, trust administration, estate planning, beneficiary representation, and commercial litigation. The firm's own organization description names elder law work as well.

That mix tells you something about the kind of client the firm serves. Some clients arrive to plan an estate while everyone is healthy and in agreement. Others arrive after a death, when a trust or a will is in dispute and the parties no longer agree. Weiner Law lists both sides of that timeline, which means the same firm can draft a plan and later defend or contest one.

Beneficiary representation is part of this same area of work. When a trust or estate names someone who suspects the assets are being mishandled, that person often needs a lawyer separate from the trustee. The firm names this as a distinct service, so a beneficiary can retain counsel who reads the accounting on their behalf.

How the team is built

Ten attorneys appear on the firm's team page, each with a stated title. The titles include Founder and CEO, Head of Litigation, Head of Trusts and Estates, senior litigation and senior associate roles, and associate attorneys. Two named department heads show how the work divides: one leads disputes, one leads planning.

Daniel R. Weiner is the founder and CEO. He earned his law degree at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and completed a Master of Laws at Duke University School of Law. Before starting the San Diego firm, he spent more than ten years at international law firms, including Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. That background gives the firm a founder trained across two legal systems.

Christopher A. Fortunati holds the Head of Litigation title. Allison R. Lemeshewsky leads Trusts and Estates. A named lead on each side gives a client a clear sense of who owns the planning work and who owns the courtroom work.

The attorneys with published detail

Geoffrey J. Farwell is a senior litigation attorney. He earned a B.S. in 2006 and an M.B.A. in 2008 from the University of Redlands, then a J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law in 2013. His practice focuses on financial elder abuse, trust and probate litigation, and estate planning. The elder abuse focus lines up with the elder law work the firm lists.

Thomas Binetter is a senior associate whose practice focuses on estate planning. Claire Linden is an associate who works on trust, probate, and estate litigation. Lauren Ghosh, also an associate, attended California Western School of Law and speaks Arabic and Spanish, which widens the range of clients she can serve directly. Eric W. Cha, Heidi Mattson, and Christina Evangelista fill out the listed team.

As a reviewer, I read a ten-lawyer roster with two clear department heads as a sign of a firm large enough to staff a matter and small enough to keep names attached to the work. Several of those names carry published school and focus detail, which lets a client match a lawyer to a problem.

Where the firm works

Weiner Law runs offices in San Diego and Los Angeles. The San Diego side includes a Del Mar office and a downtown location, and Los Angeles has two listed addresses in the downtown core. The firm marks its two Los Angeles offices and its downtown San Diego office as available by appointment. The Del Mar office is the one tied to the responsible attorney named on the site.

The legal entity is Weiner Law: Trust, Probate and Litigation Lawyers APC. The firm operates several DBAs under that entity: San Diego Probate Attorneys, Los Angeles Probate Attorneys, and Los Angeles Civil Litigation Lawyers. Each name pairs a city with a service, and each maps onto an office the firm lists.

The site does not publish a founding year. It links to the firm through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, so a prospective client can look at the firm's own posts before making contact.

What these matters usually involve

Readers weighing a probate or trust firm often want a sense of how the work proceeds, so a little general context helps. The stages below apply to this kind of practice broadly, not to any one Weiner Law case.

Administration and planning

Probate administration is the court-supervised process of settling a person's estate after death. An executor or administrator gathers assets, gives notice to creditors, pays valid debts, and distributes what remains under the will or under state law. A firm that lists probate administration handles the filings and deadlines that keep that process moving.

Trust administration runs on a parallel track outside probate court. A successor trustee steps in, notifies beneficiaries, values assets, and carries out the trust's terms. Questions arise when a beneficiary challenges an accounting or a trustee's decision.

Estate planning is the quieter half of this work. It covers wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney, and health care directives. Sound planning is what keeps a family clear of the disputes described here.

When a dispute reaches court

Probate and trust litigation goes before a probate court. The matters include will contests, claims of undue influence, breach of fiduciary duty by a trustee, and financial elder abuse. These cases turn on documents and testimony: the plan itself, medical records, bank statements, and the accounts a trustee keeps. Farwell's stated focus on financial elder abuse falls squarely in this group.

How the pieces fit together

One practice area feeds the next. Planning creates trusts and estates, administration carries them out, and litigation resolves them when they break down. The attorney roster matches that shape, with a head of planning, a head of litigation, and associates whose focuses fall on one side or the other.

In my opinion, the strongest signal here is coherence: the planning work and the litigation work feed each other, and the firm is staffed to cover both. A client with a straightforward will and a client fighting over a trust could both find a named attorney for the job.

The firm lists ten attorneys, two department heads, four offices across San Diego and Los Angeles, and four connected social profiles, all under a single professional corporation. Several of those attorneys publish the schools they attended and the matters they handle, and the responsible attorney for the firm is Daniel R. Weiner.