Weinstein & Randisi

Focus and practice areas

This Rochester, New York firm groups its work into four areas: estate planning, estate administration, elder law, and litigation. Each area connects to the others in daily practice. A client who signs a will or trust today may need probate help years later, and an elder law question about Medicaid often arrives beside asset protection planning.

Estate planning

The estate planning work runs wide. It covers wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care proxies, living wills, and advanced medical directives. It also reaches estate tax planning, business succession planning, legacy planning, and guardianships and conservatorships. That span lets one office handle a simple will and a plan that moves a family business to the next generation.

Several of these documents do quiet, practical jobs. A power of attorney lets a chosen person handle money and property if the signer cannot. A health care proxy names someone to make medical decisions, and a living will records wishes about treatment ahead of time. Guardianships and conservatorships involve a court, which appoints a person to manage the affairs of someone who can no longer manage them alone.

Estate tax planning and business succession planning sit at the more involved end of the list. Estate tax planning weighs federal and New York estate tax thresholds and uses tools like trusts or gifts to manage what an estate may owe. Business succession planning sets out who takes over an owner's stake and how, whether through a sale, a transfer to family, or an agreement among co-owners. Both call for documents that fit together, so the planning side and the tax side stay aligned.

Estate administration

Probate administration and trust administration handle what comes after a plan is in place. Probate is the court process that confirms a will and oversees the transfer of a person's property to the people who inherit it. Trust administration follows the terms of a trust, often with fewer court steps, and it can call for tax filings and an accounting to the beneficiaries. In my opinion, pairing planning with administration helps families, because the lawyers who draft the documents can later guide the people named to carry them out.

Elder law and the questions behind it

The elder law work covers Medicaid planning, asset protection planning, help choosing a nursing home, and veterans benefits. These are the questions that tend to arrive with a health crisis, on no set schedule.

Medicaid planning in New York runs on eligibility rules, look-back periods for transfers, and paperwork that proves a person qualifies. Asset protection planning usually starts years earlier, when a family wants to keep a home or savings while preparing for long-term care costs. Choosing a nursing home carries legal weight too, since admission agreements, resident rights, and payment sources all sit inside a contract. Veterans benefits add another layer, because federal programs use their own forms and criteria.

When disputes and injuries reach a lawyer

The litigation practice covers estate litigation, motor vehicle accidents, personal injury, and slip-and-fall matters. Estate litigation ties back to the planning and administration work, since disputes over a will or a trust often begin once someone has died. In New York, contested estate matters run through the Surrogate's Court, where a party might challenge a will's validity or question how an executor handled an estate.

The injury cases follow a different path. Car accident, personal injury, and slip-and-fall claims turn on fault, insurance coverage, and documented harm, and some settle with an insurer while others reach a courtroom. Handling estate disputes and injury claims under one roof gives the firm a foot in two distinct kinds of litigation.

How the team is built

The site names five attorneys: Andrew R. Randisi, Elizabeth K. Randisi, Michael Mastrodonato, Richard C. Miller, and Brittany Ellison. Two more, Samuel J. Ianacone Jr. and Raymond B. O'Neill, Jr., hold the Of Counsel title.

Of Counsel usually describes a lawyer with a steady tie to a firm who works outside the standard partner or associate track. The arrangement often brings senior experience or a defined focus to a case without a full-time seat. With two people in that role, the firm keeps extra hands ready for matters that call for them.

The site does not publish bios, law schools, or admission years for most of the group. As a reviewer, I read a roster of seven, five active attorneys plus two Of Counsel, as a mid-sized practice for its field.

Longevity and inherited files

The firm states that it has served communities throughout New York for more than 60 years. That points to duration, and the site gives no specific founding year. The base sits in Rochester, while the stated reach extends across the state.

The firm has also taken over estate planning files from several local attorneys who retired. For clients of those earlier lawyers, that means their existing wills and trusts land with an office that already holds the paperwork. In my opinion, taking on retired colleagues' files is a practical form of continuity, because estate documents can sit untouched for decades before anyone needs them.

How the firm approaches billing

Weinstein & Randisi uses flat-fee billing for its work. A flat fee sets a single agreed charge for a defined service at the start, so a client knows the arrangement before the work begins.

A flat fee suits tasks with a clear scope, such as a single will, a trust, or a probate filing, where the work can be defined in advance. That gives a client a fixed reference point for the service. The billing approach appears on the firm's home and about pages, alongside its practice-area lists.

The attorneys and their backgrounds

The record fills in the backgrounds of two members. Andrew R. Randisi is a member at Weinstein & Randisi. He earned a B.S. from Le Moyne College in 1999 and a J.D. from Villanova University, and his work centers on estate planning, elder law, trusts, wills and living wills, health care, and administrative law. Elizabeth K. Randisi is an associate. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D. from Villanova University School of Law, where she concentrated in trusts and estates and tax. Her practice runs through estate planning, estate administration, guardianship and conservatorship, health care directives, trusts, and wills. The two of them share a law school, which gives the estate side of the office a common grounding.

The two Of Counsel come from different corners of the profession. Samuel J. Ianacone Jr. attended SUNY Buffalo Law School. Raymond B. O'Neill, Jr. earned his J.D. from Albany Law School of Union University in 1977, and his focus reaches general civil litigation, criminal law, family law, matrimonial law, real estate, and lender law. That experience sits beside the estate and elder law work the members handle day to day, and it widens the range of questions the office can field.

The office and reaching it

The firm keeps its office at 290 Linden Oaks, Suite 200, in Rochester, and that single address is where meetings and document signings take place.

Getting in touch costs nothing at the start. The firm offers free initial consultations, and it states that it does not charge for phone calls or meetings. That lowers the bar for a first conversation, which matters in estate and elder law, where a person may weigh whether a question is worth a lawyer's time. The firm also lists a local Rochester number and a toll-free line, so a caller can reach the office without a long-distance charge.