Van Dyck Law Group

Focus and practice areas

Estate planning and elder law define the work at Van Dyck Law Group, which keeps offices in Princeton and Bridgewater, New Jersey. The firm works with residents of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, along with their families. Its estate planning work builds the documents that decide how assets pass and who makes decisions when a client cannot.

The firm handles asset protection, charitable planning, estate tax planning and special needs estate planning. That range covers both the paperwork of a plan and the questions that follow it. Special needs planning sets up support for a beneficiary who relies on public benefits, so the structure has to hold up over many years. Charitable planning ties a client's giving into the same documents that direct the rest of an estate. Asset protection works to shield property from claims that can arise later in life.

Beyond drafting, the firm takes on probate, estate administration and trust administration. Probate is the court process that proves a will and moves assets to heirs, and administration is the work of settling accounts and distributing what remains. The firm also handles long-term care planning, New Jersey Medicaid matters and veterans benefits. In my opinion, that mix points to work built around aging clients and the people who care for them.

The instruments a plan uses

The documents the firm prepares each do a specific job. A will directs who receives property and names an executor to carry that out. A revocable trust can hold assets during life and pass them without probate, while the person who made it keeps control. An irrevocable trust gives up that control in exchange for stronger protection over the assets it holds.

A durable power of attorney lets a chosen agent handle money and property if a client loses capacity. A health care directive does the same for medical choices. Together these four instruments form the base that the firm builds a plan on, and services like asset protection and special needs planning attach to that base. Reviewing them together is how an estate plan stays consistent across every document.

How the team is built

Fiona Van Dyck is the managing partner at Van Dyck Law Group. The attorneys page names four associate attorneys who work with her: Shikha Patel, Amanjit Heir, Stephen Stringer and Payton Honeyblue. Each associate lists a defined area of concentration, and those areas track the firm's main services.

Shikha Patel works on estate planning, including drafting wills. Payton Honeyblue also concentrates on estate planning, which puts two of the associates on the drafting side of the firm's work. Amanjit Heir covers estate and trust planning, estate and trust administration, elder law and Medicaid planning, so his work spans both the setup and the later handling of a plan.

The associates cluster around the same fields the firm names on its home page. As a reviewer, I read that overlap as a sign of a team focused on estate and elder work. A small group with shared ground can move a matter between attorneys without handing a client to an unfamiliar field. It also means the managing partner and the associates draw on one body of practice.

The Education Center and dementia support

Fiona Van Dyck founded The Education Center at Van Dyck Law Group. Her experience with her father's dementia diagnosis informs its mission. The Education Center gives that mission a named home inside the firm and provides dementia care guidance and caregiving resources for families who face the same road.

The center staffs Dementia Concierges, who hold credentials as Certified Dementia Practitioners and Support Group Facilitators. Those two credentials point to a mix of clinical knowledge and group support, which is close to the practical side of caregiving. The role connects to the firm's legal services for Alzheimer's and dementia, which include advance care planning, life care advocacy and crisis management.

Advance care planning records a person's wishes for treatment before a decline makes that harder. Life care advocacy tracks a client's needs as care changes over time. Crisis management steps in when a placement or a health event forces fast decisions. Caregivers often reach a law office at the point of a crisis, so having this support in place changes how early a family can plan.

This dementia focus is unusual for an estate firm. It pairs document work with day-to-day help for the people managing care. Families managing dementia rarely deal with one problem at a time, so a single office that handles both the legal and the practical questions saves steps. In my opinion, that combination is the clearest through line in how the firm describes itself.

Estate tax and Medicaid planning

The firm names estate tax planning as one of its practice areas. Estate tax planning looks at how much of an estate may be taxed and how gifts, trusts and charitable transfers change that figure. New Jersey rules and federal rules both shape the outcome, so a plan often accounts for more than one set of thresholds. The work runs closely with the will and trust drafting the firm already does.

Medicaid planning runs on a separate track. It generally involves measuring assets and income against state eligibility limits, then arranging a plan well before care is needed. Long-term care planning follows similar timing, since choices made early tend to leave more options open. Veterans benefits can add another source of help for those who qualify and their spouses. For many families these pieces overlap, since the same assets that fund an estate also count toward Medicaid eligibility. The firm lists all of these as standing services, which fits its broader elder law focus.

Reach across three states

Van Dyck Law Group works with clients in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. Its two New Jersey offices give the firm a base in the central part of the state and a second point of contact to the north. Both offices serve the same central New Jersey population the firm names on its home page. The firm's site data also links to Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, where an estate firm can share planning updates and center resources with families who follow it.

The associate bench extends that reach in practice. Stephen Stringer's admission across three states lets the firm meet clients whose estates or families cross state lines. That capacity matters most when property, heirs and care decisions sit in different jurisdictions, a common situation for families spread across the New York and New Jersey area.