American Wills & Estates

Focus and practice areas

American Wills & Estates keeps its work inside three fields: probate estate administration, estate planning and real estate law. The firm has assisted clients across Western Pennsylvania for over 25 years. That narrow scope shapes everything else on the site.

Estate planning here covers last wills and testaments, durable powers of attorney, living wills, and both revocable and irrevocable trusts. The probate side runs from the petition that appoints an executor or administrator through the management of estate assets. The firm handles creditor claims and prepares and files inheritance and estate tax returns.

Real estate work covers deed preparation, property sales and transfers, and retitling.These fit naturally alongside the estate work, since a house is often a large asset an executor has to move. In my opinion, that pairing is one of the more practical things about how the firm has organised itself.

Contested and court-facing matters

The firm also handles Orphans' Court litigation. That includes will contests, trustee negligence, fiduciary fraud, elder financial abuse and legal guardianships. These are the matters that turn an administration from paperwork into a dispute.

Some general context helps here. Orphans' Court in Pennsylvania has jurisdiction over decedents' estates, trusts and guardianships. A will contest usually begins with an appeal from the register of wills decision, and the challenger carries the burden on grounds such as lack of capacity or undue influence. Guardianship petitions require medical testimony about the alleged incapacitated person and a hearing at which that person has the right to be present and represented.

How the team is built

Six attorneys appear on the firm's pages. Three are partners: Thomas J. Dempsey, Jr., Branden Fulciniti and Paul Giuffre. Edward C. Spontak is senior counsel, Addison Walter is an attorney, and Lloyd A. Welling is of counsel. The site puts the combined legal experience of its attorneys at over 85 years.

Dempsey represents clients in the Allegheny County Orphans' Court Division and in other Orphans' Courts, on guardianship, fiduciary and estate matters. He clerked for the Honorable Ronald W. Folino and the Honorable Bernard J. McGowan of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County. He graduated from the Duquesne University School of Law Evening Division in 1987.

Fulciniti works across real estate, business formation, tax, commercial transactions, estate planning, trusts, estate administration and Marcellus Shale matters. He is admitted before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and belongs to the Allegheny County Bar Association. His J.D. came from Duquesne University School of Law in 2007, after a B.S. in Biology from James Madison University in 2002.

Backgrounds outside estate work

Giuffre began his career as a prosecutor with the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office. He then moved into private practice with criminal and civil litigation, and later worked as a partner in a Downtown Pittsburgh firm focused on medical malpractice and personal injury cases. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and a lifelong resident of the Allegheny County area. His law degree is from Duquesne University School of Law, 1991.

Spontak has over 20 years in the Pittsburgh legal market. He handles estate planning and administration, litigation, and business matters. His litigation experience covers commercial and contract disputes, construction, environmental issues, and estate, guardianship and fiduciary matters. On the business side he works on formation, succession planning and 501(c) matters.

Walter concentrates on estate planning and estate administration, and tailors plans to each client's circumstances. Welling is listed as of counsel. Three of the four attorneys whose law schools are stated trained at Duquesne, which sits a short walk from the firm's downtown office.

Where the firm works

The main office is in downtown Pittsburgh. The firm also lists locations in Greentree, Aspinwall, Washington and Ligonier. Those last two reach well outside Allegheny County, into Washington and Westmoreland.

Geography matters more in probate than in most areas of law. An estate is administered in the county where the decedent was domiciled, so the register of wills and the Orphans' Court that hear a matter are fixed by where the person lived. A firm with points of contact across several counties can meet an executor closer to home while filing where the law requires.

How the work is priced and paced

The firm offers most probate administration and executor services on a flat fee basis, set out in a written fee agreement. As a reviewer, I treat a stated pricing structure as one of the more useful things a firm can publish, because it is checkable and it tells a prospective client what kind of engagement to expect.

Executor work has a fairly predictable shape, which is part of why flat pricing fits it. The personal representative files a petition for grant of letters, advertises the estate in a legal journal and a newspaper of general circulation, notifies beneficiaries, gathers and values assets, settles debts and taxes, and then files an accounting or obtains receipts and releases from the beneficiaries. Pennsylvania inheritance tax returns are generally due nine months after death, with a discount available for early payment.

What the record shows

The verifiable material on this firm is consistent. The named attorneys have stated titles, three have identified law schools with graduation years, and two have identified bar admissions or memberships. Dempsey's clerkships are named with the judges and the court.

The site states its own history in duration terms: over 25 years of assisting Western Pennsylvania clients, and over 85 years of combined attorney experience. It does not publish a founding year or an entity designation such as LLC or P.C. Readers who want that detail can check the Pennsylvania Department of State business search or the Disciplinary Board's attorney lookup, both of which are public.

For someone facing an estate to administer, a will to draft or a deed to transfer in the Pittsburgh area, the material the firm publishes about its attorneys and its fee structure is specific enough to act on. The firm's practice covers probate, planning and real estate, and its six named attorneys work from five listed Western Pennsylvania locations.