Benazeer "Benny" Roshan

Los Angeles

Litigation

In the male-dominated field of wills and trusts, Benazeer "Benny" Roshan is a rare female leader who heads Greenberg Glusker LLP's trusts and probate litigation practice. The firm recruited her in 2019 to establish the practice group.

Earlier, she'd been named a Daily Journal Top Under 40 at her own probate litigation boutique, Roshan Wick LLP. She's also held partnerships at Miller Barondess LLP and at Augustine Seymour & Roshan LLP.

Roshan was born in Afghanistan and emigrated with her family when she was 12. She learned English the summer before junior high school, she said, by watching Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. Her siblings went into medical fields, "but the idea of blood makes me pass out, so I was the lone wolf who became a lawyer."

At UC Berkeley School of Law, she got the prize for the highest grade in her trusts and estates class thanks to a paper she wrote about her grandmother's experience fighting for her inheritance rights in an Afghan village court. Impressed by her comparative analysis of the U.S. and Afghan probate systems, Adjunct Professor Michael C. Ferguson later recommended that she enter the field. "He said, 'You can't go wrong,' and it was my only award in law school, so I went for it."

In a current case at Greenberg Glusker, Roshan represents a woman who is petitioning the probate court for a share of her late father's estate, worth an estimated $50 million to $100 million. The woman alleges that her stepmother wrongfully caused the sick and elderly man to overhaul his estate plan in his final years to disinherit his natural heirs. In re the Moses Lerner Family Trust for Jacqueline Kramer, Dated September 21, 2005, As Amended, 21STPB08705 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Sept. 7, 2021).

Roshan said the case represents an increasingly common trend. "We're seeing transitioning baby boomers who leave their estates to their last spouses instead of to their children, and that often leads to litigation."

Trial in the Moses Lerner matter will likely take place next year; the litigation was slowed by the pandemic. Meanwhile, Roshan has gathered evidence and lined up experts. "We use geriatric psychologists who retroactively review the deceased's cognitive capacity, and we interview caregivers and drivers and witnesses to his day-to-day life."

Cases like this require tact and diplomacy, Roshan said. "A lot of family emotional issues surface, including the dynamics of parent-child relationships. You have to navigate that -- and be a bit of a psychiatrist yourself."

--John Roemer