Law Office of Polly Tatum

Focus and practice areas

The Law Office of Polly Tatum works in four connected areas: estate planning, probate and trust administration, elder law, and mediation for divorcing spouses and older families. The Worcester office takes clients from across Massachusetts, in person and by video.

The estate planning side covers wills, trusts, powers of attorney, special needs planning and legacy planning. The firm also handles pet planning, which not every estate practice bothers to name.

Elder law here means Medicaid planning and nursing home planning. Those two sit close to the estate work in practice, since a family asking about long-term care costs is usually asking about the house and the savings at the same time.

Where the areas overlap

Medicaid eligibility in Massachusetts turns on asset and income limits, with a look-back period applied to transfers made before an application. That is why planning conversations tend to start years ahead of any nursing home admission. A firm that handles both the trust drafting and the Medicaid application can keep one set of documents consistent with the other.

Probate and trust administration close the loop. When a client who planned with the firm dies, the same office can file the estate with the probate court and distribute under the trust it drafted. In my opinion, that continuity is the practical argument for keeping planning and administration under one roof.

How the team is built

Polly A. Tatum is the CEO and founding attorney. She founded the firm and leads the team.

The site names eight other attorneys alongside her: Jamese Tatum, Kieran McGee, Nicholle Garces, Anna Bathe, Josephine Bajande Sanguyo, David Blanco, Corrine Maxwell and Angel Coleman. That is a sizeable roster for a practice built around one named founder, and it suggests the caseload is spread rather than funneled through a single desk.

Several of the attorneys are trained mediators. Mediation training is a separate qualification from a law license, and it changes how a lawyer runs a room. The mediator's job is to help two parties reach their own agreement, so the skill set leans on facilitation more than argument.

Mediation as a route through divorce

The firm offers divorce mediation and elder mediation. In Massachusetts, spouses who reach a full agreement can file for divorce under Section 1A, which is the uncontested track. The court reviews the separation agreement and holds a short hearing before issuing judgment.

Reaching that agreement is the hard part, and it is where a mediator does the work. Sessions typically move through the same ground the court would cover: property division, any support obligations, parenting arrangements where children are involved. The parties still each need their own legal advice on the final terms, and mediators say so up front.

Elder mediation

Elder mediation covers a different set of disputes. These are family conversations about care decisions, living arrangements, finances and sometimes guardianship, where adult siblings disagree about what a parent needs. There is often no lawsuit pending and no obvious forum, so a neutral third party is the only structure available.

The firm also lists same-sex divorce and estate planning during a divorce as related services. The second one matters more than it sounds. A pending divorce affects beneficiary designations, existing wills and any trust naming a spouse, and those documents keep operating until someone amends them.

What the record shows

The firm says it has been helping clients and their families since 1997. That puts nearly three decades behind the Worcester office.

The site does not publish a formal entity name, so the listing carries the trade name as it appears on the firm's own pages. Bios and credentials for the attorneys other than Polly Tatum are not on the pages we reviewed, which means the roster is verifiable by name only.

As a reviewer, what stands out is the coherence of the service list. Estate planning, probate, elder law and family mediation are areas that draw the same clients at different points in their lives. A couple who sign wills in their fifties may return for Medicaid planning in their seventies, and their children may return again for probate.

What to expect from the process

Estate planning matters usually begin with an inventory: what the client owns, how each asset is titled, who they want to receive it. Titling drives more outcomes than most people expect, since jointly held property and accounts with named beneficiaries pass outside a will entirely.

Probate in Massachusetts runs through the Probate and Family Court in the county where the decedent lived. Worcester County has its own division. The personal representative files the petition, notifies heirs and creditors, inventories the estate and files an accounting before the estate closes. Informal and formal tracks exist, and which one applies depends on whether the will is contested and whether all interested parties can be located.

Trust administration follows a separate path outside court supervision. The trustee steps in, identifies the trust property, handles tax filings and distributes according to the trust terms. Where a client has both a will and a funded trust, the two processes run in parallel and someone has to coordinate them.

Special needs and legacy planning

Special needs planning addresses a specific problem: a direct inheritance can disqualify a beneficiary from means-tested benefits like SSI and MassHealth. A properly drafted special needs trust holds the assets for the beneficiary's benefit while preserving eligibility. The drafting requirements are technical and the consequences of getting them wrong are immediate.

Legacy planning is a looser category. It generally covers the non-financial side of an estate plan: values, instructions, family history, charitable intent. Firms that offer it are treating the plan as a document family members will actually read.

Who this office fits

The client base implied by this service list is Massachusetts families dealing with aging parents, blended households, or a death in the family. The virtual option widens the geography, which matters for adult children who live out of state and are managing a parent's affairs from a distance.

Divorcing couples who want to stay out of a contested courtroom fight are the other group here. Mediation only works when both parties will sit down, so it is not available to everyone who wants it.

Polly Tatum founded the firm in 1997 and it now lists nine attorneys, several of them trained mediators, working from 19 Cedar St in Worcester across estate planning, probate, elder law and mediation.