A Lawyer’s Neutral · Serving Counsel Statewide
Resolution for Alabama’s most complex probate and fiduciary disputes.
Engaged by counsel where the legal and factual record is dense and the stakes are high.
Engaged by counsel where the legal and factual record is dense and the stakes are high.
Forty-eight years as a member of the Alabama State Bar. Ten of them on the bench. The rest in the trenches with counsel and their clients.
He served as an Assistant District Attorney, then maintained a private civil practice for thirty years before taking the bench as Judge of Probate for Shelby County, Alabama.
From the Probate Court bench he presided over contested estates including trust construction, trustee removal, accountings and surcharge actions, fiduciary breach claims, guardianships and conservatorships, and the equitable matters that travel alongside them.
He now devotes his efforts exclusively to mediation, serving counsel and parties throughout Alabama in high-value probate, fiduciary, and complex civil disputes. Recent work includes a multi-million-dollar trust and fiduciary dispute resolved through mediation.
Eastern Shore Mediation is a full-time mediation practice. It is not a litigator’s side practice or an after-the-bench consultancy. Mediations are conducted in person at counsels’ location of choice anywhere in the state.
Contested estates, trust construction, trustee-removal proceedings, accountings and surcharge actions, family settlement agreements.
Trustee and personal representative liability; breach of fiduciary duty; guardianship and conservatorship matters; trust administration conflicts among beneficiaries.
Partnership and closely-held business dissolutions with intersecting fiduciary issues; multi-party commercial disputes; real estate and high-value civil litigation.
The mediator must be well prepared. Mediation works best when the neutral reads the record, fully understands the disputes, and works with counsel and their clients until a resolution is found.
Pre-mediation conferences with counsel are part of the standard engagement. Sessions are scheduled at a date and location agreeable to the parties. All communications are strictly confidential.
Counsel weighing mediation are invited to send the operative instrument and the key documents in the matter. All inquiries are held in strict confidence.
Once engaged, counsel for each party receive a secure link through which to submit their pre-mediation materials. Documents are encrypted in transit and at rest and are accessible only to the mediator.
Inquiries from either side of a dispute are welcome. Engagement as mediator follows the agreement of all parties.
