Verlan Y. Kwan

Trust & Estate Administration

Los Angeles

Verlan Y. Kwan is a partner who supervises the probate administration department at the estate litigation boutique Keystone Law Group, P.C.

She's been with the firm since it opened in 2014. "I wanted to learn litigation, and I found that the people who do trusts and estates are very congenial."

Kwan explained that practitioners in the field acquire empathy in the course of dealing with clients experiencing the high emotion associated with the deaths of loved ones -- often accompanied by the sudden unwelcome discovery that there's been a betrayal by another family member.

"Along with all that, there's always only a fixed amount of money in the pot," she said, speaking of the size of estates in question. "So, it is to our advantage to try to minimize fees and settle disputes without expensive trials, and friendly relations among counsel help with that."

A long-running case involves the estate of a wealthy timeshare developer in Kauai. His surviving spouse retained Kwan because her late husband's trust had failed to consider the community property character of his assets. In re the David E. Walters Trust, GP015736 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 12, 2011).

"This was one of my first cases," Kwan said. She successfully litigated the removal of the successor trustee and the recovery of the surviving spouse's community property interest worth tens of millions of dollars. "We settled that part with an agreement that everything in the estate was community property," she said.

Kwan also recovered more than $10 million in excessive estate taxes paid by the prior trustee.

She currently represents the second successor trustee in the complex administration of the trust, including consulting with co-counsel in Hawaii and Washington state regarding a multi-million dollar claim against the previous trustee for breach of trust. And Kwan advises the client on sales of real property and strategies for managing the trust's business interests.

In another matter, Kwan stepped in when the executors of a decedent's estate learned that his estranged daughter had stolen the contents of his bank account, worth about $160,000, by misrepresenting to the bank that she was his sole and rightful heir. In fact, the decedent had disinherited the daughter and left his money to four charities. In re the Estate of Carlos Tovar, 21 STPB12233 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 29, 2021).

"We had her dead to rights," Kwan said. "We got her to return everything down to the last penny. In cases like this, you see a lot of greed, and you try not to get jaded. You try to have compassion and heart."

-- John Roemer