The Shevy Law Firm, LLC

Focus and practice areas

Two fields of law define this firm: estate planning and elder law. Patricia J. Shevy, known as Tricia, opened The Shevy Law Firm, LLC in Albany, New York, in 2005, and it has kept that focus ever since. The stated aim is to help clients meet long-term goals through estate planning, business succession planning and charitable planning.

A narrow practice tends to mean the same questions come up often, and the answers get sharpened over years of handling them. Estate planning and elder law also overlap in daily practice, because a plan drafted today may need to hold up when the same client later applies for long-term care. Keeping both areas in one office lets the firm follow a client across that timeline, handling a first will and a later Medicaid application for the same person.

What the estate planning work involves

Estate planning here covers both the building of a plan and its administration once it is in force. The documents the firm names are wills, trusts, and estate and trust administration. Business owners can arrange succession for their companies, and clients who want to give to charity can build that goal into the same plan.

Wills, trusts and administration

Each of these documents does a specific job. A will directs where property goes and names an executor to carry that out. A trust holds assets under set terms, and depending on how it is drafted, it can keep some property out of probate or manage it for a beneficiary over time. Revocable trusts can be changed during the maker's life, while irrevocable ones trade that flexibility for other advantages, and the choice between them turns on a client's goals. Estate and trust administration is the work that comes after a death: gathering assets, paying debts and taxes, and passing what remains to the people named. Administration can stretch over months, since creditors get a window to come forward and taxes have to be settled before anything is distributed. In New York, many estates pass through Surrogate's Court before assets reach beneficiaries, and the court oversees the executor along the way.

Business succession and charitable giving

Succession planning gives a business owner a route for handing over a company. It usually involves setting a value on the business, deciding who takes ownership, and moving shares or control over time so the transfer holds up. Business owners bring a further set of concerns, because a company has to keep running while ownership shifts, and the plan has to account for partners, employees and family who may all have a stake. Charitable planning often runs through vehicles such as charitable trusts or gifts written into a will, and those choices can change how an estate is taxed. As a reviewer, I read the firm's attention to succession and charitable giving as a sign it works with clients whose affairs run past a single account and a house.

Elder law and Medicaid

The elder law side has two main parts, and both center on Medicaid. The firm handles Medicaid nursing home eligibility, which means representing the client, assembling the application and coordinating with the local Department of Social Services. It also does Medicaid planning for people thinking ahead to their own later years or the later years of an elderly relative.

This work runs on paperwork and timing. An application for nursing home Medicaid in New York goes to the county Department of Social Services, which reviews an applicant's finances over a set look-back period before deciding eligibility. Rules on income, assets and transfers all bear on the outcome, and a married couple faces a different calculation than a single applicant. Planning done earlier, while care is still some way off, gives a family more room to arrange assets within those rules. For a family, the practical value of planning early is mostly a matter of time, since some Medicaid steps only work when they are taken well before a nursing home stay begins. Because the firm both prepares the application and deals with the Department of Social Services directly, a family has one point of contact for a process that involves detailed financial disclosure.

How the team is built

The site names two attorneys: Patricia J. Shevy and Linda Zahnleuter. Shevy founded the firm and set its focus on estate planning and elder law from the start. She built the practice around communication, approachability and affordability, and she treats estate planning as a team effort.

That team reaches outside the firm's own walls. Shevy works alongside a client's financial advisor, bank representatives and insurance companies while a plan takes shape. Estate plans touch accounts, policies and beneficiary designations spread across several institutions, so bringing those parties into the discussion keeps the parts in agreement. Treating a plan as teamwork has a practical upside, since the firm can catch a beneficiary designation on an insurance policy that would otherwise override what a will says. The site also lists Linda Zahnleuter as the second attorney at the firm. A small estate practice like this usually means a client works with a named attorney directly and sees the same face across the life of a plan.

Who the firm serves

The firm's clients cover a wide span of ages and situations. It points to young parents planning for their children, retired couples, and business owners arranging succession for their companies. Each group needs a different mix of documents, though they share one underlying question about what happens to people and property over time. A young family may want guardianship set out in a will, while a retired couple may weigh a trust and a plan for future care.

The firm works with clients across New York's Capital District and the surrounding counties from its Albany office. In my opinion, the steady focus since 2005 is the clearest thing a prospective client can weigh here: a firm that has practiced estate planning and elder law, and only those two areas, for roughly two decades. For a family in the region drafting a will, setting up a trust, or filing a Medicaid application, the firm handles that exact category of work.