Law Offices Of SRIS, P.C. drafts and administers wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, and estate plans for clients with property, business interests, and beneficiaries across Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and New York. We also handle estate administration, probate, and contested matters where the will or trust is challenged. Most estate-planning firms cover one state. The firm is structured for the client whose family does not.
A complete estate plan is not a single document. It is a coordinated set of instruments — will, trust, durable power of attorney, advance medical directive, beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and insurance — chosen for the client's particular family, business, and tax picture. Below are the six categories of work the firm runs as discrete engagements.
The basic instruments every adult should have in place: last will and testament, durable power of attorney, advance medical directive, HIPAA authorization, and — where appropriate — a transfer-on-death deed for the home. The threshold plan that protects against intestacy.
The probate-avoidance instrument. Assets retitled into the trust pass at death without probate, with greater privacy, faster distribution, and continuity of management if the settlor becomes incapacitated. Most useful where the client owns real estate in more than one state — exactly the firm's footprint.
Where the goal is asset protection, generation-skipping, charitable planning, or estate-tax mitigation. Includes ILITs, GRATs, CRUTs, CRATs, dynasty trusts, special-needs trusts, and domestic asset-protection trusts where state law supports them.
The post-death work of qualifying the executor or administrator, marshaling assets, paying debts, filing fiduciary income-tax returns and any estate-tax return, and distributing the residue. Each jurisdiction has its own probate court, its own forms, and its own deadlines.
Where the will, the trust, or the fiduciary's conduct is challenged. Will contests on grounds of capacity, undue influence, or improper execution; trust reformation and modification; breach-of-fiduciary-duty actions against trustees, executors, and conservators; accounting disputes.
Adult guardianship and conservatorship proceedings for incapacitated individuals; New York's Mental Hygiene Law Article 81 proceedings; special-needs trusts (first- and third-party) drafted to preserve means-tested benefits; ABLE-account coordination.
Most estate-planning practices are licensed in a single state. That works perfectly well when all of the assets, the residence, and the beneficiaries sit inside that state. When they don't — when the family owns the beach house in Maryland, the apartment in New York, the operating company in Virginia, and the surviving spouse moves to New Jersey — the single-state plan starts to fail.
Real property is governed by the law of the state where it sits. A Virginia will alone leaves out-of-state property exposed to ancillary probate in each state where the decedent owned real estate. A revocable trust funded with multi-state real property avoids that problem at the source.
Two states can each claim a decedent as their resident for estate-tax purposes — and tax the same estate twice. Domicile turns on facts (driver's license, voting registration, time spent, intent to remain). Planning ahead of the move is far cheaper than litigating it after death.
Where the family owns an operating business in one state and the principals reside in another, the estate plan must coordinate with the operating agreement, the buy-sell, and the succession instruments. The firm's business-law practice handles those instruments under the same engagement.
When beneficiaries live in a different state from where the estate is administered, the plan should anticipate which jurisdiction controls income taxation of the trust, the location of trustee meetings, and the distribution mechanics. Drafting choices made on day one foreclose entire categories of disputes downstream.
The federal estate-tax exemption sits at $15 million per person in 2026 ($30 million per married couple) under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Most estates never reach the federal threshold. State-level estate and inheritance taxes are a different story — three of our five jurisdictions impose their own transfer taxes, and Maryland is the only state in the country with both an estate tax and an inheritance tax. Forum and domicile planning becomes consequential well below the federal exemption.
| State | Probate Forum & Code | State Estate / Inheritance Tax | Notable Doctrine or Trap | Will Witnesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Virginia VA
|
Circuit Court · Clerk's OfficeVa. Code Title 64.2
|
No State Tax
No estate tax. No inheritance tax.
Federal exemption only.
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Augmented estate / spousal elective share under § 64.2-308 — surviving spouse can claim a share of the augmented estate even when disinherited by will. Holographic wills (unwitnessed but entirely handwritten) recognized. |
2 witnesses§ 64.2-403
|
|
Maryland MD
|
Orphans' Court · Register of WillsMd. Estates & Trusts
|
Both Taxes
Estate tax + inheritance tax. Estate-tax exemption ~$5M (well below federal).
Inheritance tax 10% on non-lineal heirs (siblings, etc.). Spouse, descendants, parents exempt.
|
The only state in the country with both an estate tax and an inheritance tax. Estate planning that ignores the Maryland threshold misses where the actual tax exposure begins. |
2 witnessesEst. & Trusts § 4-102
|
|
D.C. DC
|
Probate Division
D.C. Superior CourtD.C. Code Title 18 |
Estate Tax
D.C. estate tax with exemption ~$4.87M.
Significantly below federal $15M threshold.
|
Domicile question is acute for District residents who own property in MD or VA — D.C. taxes its residents on the worldwide estate, while MD and VA tax real property regardless of domicile. Coordinated planning is essential. |
2 witnessesD.C. Code § 18-103
|
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New Jersey NJ
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Surrogate's Court (county)N.J.S.A. Title 3B
|
Inheritance Tax
No estate tax (since 2018). Inheritance tax remains.
Class A (spouse, children, parents): 0%. Class C (siblings, in-laws): 11–16%. Class D (everyone else): 15–16%.
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NJ repealed its estate tax effective 2018, but the inheritance tax still bites hard for non-lineal beneficiaries. A bequest to a sibling, a friend, or a partner draws a state tax bill that a bequest to a child does not. |
2 witnessesN.J.S.A. 3B:3-2
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New York NY
|
Surrogate's Court (county)EPTL · SCPA
|
Estate Tax · Cliff
NY estate-tax exemption ~$7.35M (2026).
The "cliff": exceed exemption by 5% and tax applies to the entire estate, not just the excess. No portability to surviving spouse.
|
The New York estate-tax cliff is the most severe trap in the firm's footprint. An estate slightly above 105% of the exemption owes tax on every dollar — making the tier just above $7.7M dramatically more expensive than the tier just below. Article 81 (Mental Hygiene Law) governs adult guardianship. |
2 witnessesEPTL § 3-2.1
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Most estate plans pass through probate without dispute. The ones that don't tend to share a common thread — a recent change to a longstanding plan, an unequal distribution among children, a non-family beneficiary, a fiduciary acting beyond authority. The firm represents both petitioners and respondents in contested matters.
Whether the testator understood the natural objects of bounty, the nature of the property being disposed of, and the act of executing a will at the time of execution. Frequently raised where the will was executed during cognitive decline.
Where a person in a position of trust over the testator has substituted their own will for the testator's. Courts examine isolation, opportunity, susceptibility, and whether the new beneficiary participated in procuring the instrument.
Failure to comply with statutory formalities — typically two witnesses present at signing, with the testator's signature in their presence. Holographic (handwritten) wills are recognized in some jurisdictions but not all; nuncupative wills almost never.
Actions against trustees, executors, and conservators for self-dealing, commingling, failure to account, or breach of the duty of loyalty. Remedies include surcharge, removal, and constructive trust over the misappropriated property.
Where a trust no longer matches the settlor's intent due to changed circumstances (tax law changes, family changes, beneficiary changes), modern trust codes increasingly permit court-supervised reformation. Standards vary significantly state to state.
Where the language of the instrument is ambiguous and beneficiaries dispute its meaning, the court construes the document. Latent vs. patent ambiguity, extrinsic evidence rules, and the cardinal rule (settlor intent governs) come into play.
Almost everyone needs a will. Many people benefit from a revocable trust as well. The will controls assets that haven't been retitled into a trust and names guardians for minor children; the trust avoids probate, provides incapacity management during life, and — for clients owning real estate in more than one state — eliminates the need for ancillary probate in each of those states.
The right answer depends on what you own, where you own it, who your beneficiaries are, and how much complexity you are prepared to maintain during your life. The first call is usually the conversation that decides which instrument set fits the family.
Generally yes — most states recognize a will validly executed under the law of the state where it was signed. But "valid" is not the same as "optimal." The will may rely on out-of-state defaults that no longer match your situation; it may name an out-of-state executor whose qualification is more difficult here; it may not coordinate with your current beneficiary designations or your spouse's plan. And if you have moved between common-law and community-property states, the assumptions baked into the prior will may not transfer.
A will executed before a major life change — marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, the death of a beneficiary, the sale of a major asset — should always be reviewed.
It depends on which state you are domiciled in at death and where your assets are located. The federal exemption is $15 million per person in 2026, so most estates do not owe federal estate tax. But three of our five jurisdictions impose their own transfer taxes well below that level: Maryland has both an estate tax (~$5M exemption) and an inheritance tax (10% on non-lineal beneficiaries); D.C. has an estate tax (~$4.87M exemption); and New York has an estate tax (~$7.35M exemption) with the notorious "cliff" — exceed the exemption by more than 5% and the tax applies to the entire estate. New Jersey has no estate tax but retains an inheritance tax on transfers to non-lineal beneficiaries. Virginia has neither.
Where state-level exposure is in play, structuring the estate to take advantage of the unlimited marital deduction, lifetime gifts to use exemptions, and credit-shelter trust mechanics can materially change the tax bill.
Ancillary probate is a second probate proceeding required in a state where the decedent owned real property but was not domiciled. It happens when a Virginia resident dies owning a beach house in Maryland, or a New York resident dies owning property in New Jersey. Each state's probate court has to qualify a personal representative and oversee the transfer of the property located there.
The cleanest way to avoid ancillary probate is to retitle the out-of-state real estate into a revocable living trust during life. Property held in trust passes outside the probate process entirely, in any state. For clients with real estate in more than one of our five jurisdictions, the revocable trust is usually the difference between one streamlined administration and several uncoordinated ones.
Possibly. Will contests are governed by state-specific statutes and case law and have strict deadlines (often months from probate, not years). The most common grounds are lack of testamentary capacity, undue influence, fraud, and improper execution. Standing to contest is generally limited to people who would inherit if the will were invalidated — usually intestate heirs and beneficiaries under prior valid wills.
The threshold question is what evidence supports the contest: medical records around the time of execution, witnesses to the execution itself, prior wills, and any documentary evidence of the relationship between the testator and the alleged influencer. The cost of contesting — and the risk of an in terrorem (no-contest) clause forfeiting whatever the contestant would have inherited — should be evaluated before any pleading is filed.
The general guideline is every three to five years, but real-world life events drive most reviews: marriage, divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, the death of a beneficiary or executor, a significant change in wealth, the sale or purchase of a major asset, the start of a closely-held business, retirement, or relocation to a new state. Tax-law changes — like the 2026 increase of the federal exemption to $15 million under the OBBBA — can also justify a refresh, particularly for plans that were structured around lower exemption thresholds.
An out-of-date plan is often worse than no plan, because the named individuals and the named distributions look authoritative even when they no longer reflect the client's intent.
Send a description of your family, your assets, and the states in which you own property or have beneficiaries. Intake confirms scope, runs a conflict check, and routes the engagement to counsel admitted in each bar where the plan will need to operate.
(888) 437-7747