Amoruso & Amoruso LLP

Focus and practice areas

Estate planning and elder law define most of what this firm does. Amoruso & Amoruso LLP opened in Rye Brook, New York, in 2002, and its work covers estate planning, elder law, asset protection, and estate and trust administration. Michael Amoruso started the firm that year, and it has kept to those areas since.

The clients are individuals and families rather than corporations. In my opinion, that narrow focus is worth noting: the firm keeps to two related fields handled by a small team. For anyone weighing a firm on evidence, a clear and consistent focus is easier to judge than a long menu of unrelated services.

How the team is built

Two attorneys carry the legal work, and an office manager supports them. Michael J. Amoruso is the managing partner. He earned his J.D. from Boston College Law School in 1994 and holds bar admissions in New York (1995), Massachusetts (1998), and Connecticut (2009). His practice concentrates on elder law, asset preservation, estate planning, estate administration, and guardianship.

His work outside the firm fills out the picture. He is a past President of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and a past Chair of the New York State Bar Association Elder Law Section. He teaches as an adjunct professor at the Stetson University College of Law, and he hosts a radio show called Elder Care on the Air. Those roles put him inside the professional bodies that shape how elder law is practiced in the state.

Sreelekha Chakrabarty Amoruso is a partner. She practices in estate planning and elder law, the same two fields the firm centers on. Paula Cirelli works as the legal assistant and office manager, and she runs the day-to-day side of the office.

Services the firm handles

The list of services is long for a two-attorney firm. It includes wills, trusts, living trusts, Medicaid planning, special needs planning, business succession planning, advance directives, and powers of attorney. On the administration side, the firm handles estate and probate administration, trust administration, guardianship, and veterans benefits.

Several of these areas run through set procedures. Medicaid planning deals with eligibility rules and the state's look-back period, so the timing of gifts and transfers matters. Guardianship goes before a court, which appoints someone to make decisions for a person who can no longer make them alone. Veterans benefits claims move through the Department of Veterans Affairs and its own review steps. In my opinion, keeping these services in one office helps families who often meet them together as a parent ages.

How this kind of planning usually works

Estate planning usually starts with a review of what a person owns and whom they want to provide for. The documents follow from there. A will directs where property goes. A trust can hold and manage assets during life and after death. A power of attorney names someone to handle financial matters, and advance directives cover health care choices when a person cannot state them.

Trust and estate administration comes after a death, when someone gathers the assets, pays debts and taxes, and passes on what remains. Probate is the court process that confirms a will. The firm handles both the planning stage and this later administration stage, which means a family can stay with the same office through both. Special needs planning and business succession planning add two more tracks: one protects benefits for a family member with a disability, and the other sets out who takes over a company when an owner steps back.

Who the firm serves and where

The office in Rye Brook is in Westchester County, and the firm's reach follows the surrounding region. It serves clients in Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland Counties in New York, along with Fairfield County in Connecticut. Michael Amoruso's admission in both states lines up with that two-state coverage, since New York and Connecticut estate rules differ and a client near the border may need advice on either.

The staff speak English, Spanish, French, and Bengali. Estate and elder law work asks clients to discuss family details and sign binding documents, so the ability to talk in a client's own language carries real weight. As a reviewer, I would count those four languages as a practical point in the firm's favor for a mixed community. The firm has held to elder law and estate planning under the same name since 2002, and the credentials it publishes for its managing partner are checkable through the bar and the professional groups he has led.

The office and reaching the firm

The firm works from a single address, 800 Westchester Avenue in Rye Brook, near the eastern edge of the county and close to the Connecticut line. One office suits a team this size, and it means a client sees the same people in the same place across the years an estate plan tends to run. The firm lists one phone line, (914) 253-9255, and it publishes its practice at amorusolaw.com.

A client who signs a plan in their sixties may return years later to change a trustee or revisit the terms, and later still for administration after a death. A firm that holds one address under one name gives that kind of client a fixed point to come back to.

Shared training and overlapping focus

Sreelekha Chakrabarty Amoruso completed her law degree at Boston College Law School, the same school the managing partner attended. Her stated focus runs to estate planning and elder law, and it takes in health care matters as well. Michael Amoruso's focus covers those fields too and extends to probate.

Health care as a named focus for both partners has a practical side in an office this small. When one partner is in court or otherwise occupied, the other can pick up a matter in the same field, and the client keeps moving rather than waiting on a single person. I read the matched focus as a deliberate build: the firm puts its two lawyers on a short set of related fields instead of stretching across ground it cannot staff.

The name behind the firm

The firm's title carries the Amoruso surname twice, and both partners hold it. Michael J. Amoruso is one, and Sreelekha Chakrabarty Amoruso is the other. A shared name across the two people who run a practice is a plain marker of close-held leadership. For a client, the person whose name is on the door is the person handling the file, and at a firm with two lawyers that stays true from the first meeting through the work that follows.