Barry R Robinson

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Practice Strengths
* Business
* Distribution and Franchise
* Employee Benefits
* Employment
* Energy Industry
* Global Practices
* Green Business and Sustainability
* Healthcare Industry
* Hospitality Industry
* Intellectual Property
* International Trade
* Legislative and Regulatory
* Litigation
* Media Industry
* Private Wealth
- Charitable Planning
- Private Wealth Planning
- Trusts and Estates
* Real Estate
* Sports and Entertainment
* Tax

Estate Planning
When you trust us to develop an estate plan, our number-one objective is to ensure your wishes are carried out. We help you make the best planning decisions by giving you sound alternatives, showing the benefits and risks of each, explaining any potential ramifications of the course you choose, and making sure our advice reflects the latest developments in federal and state tax policies. Our services include trust and estate administration, guardianships and custodial accounts. We can plan highly complex wills, trust agreements and powers of attorney for a husband and wife, as well as structuring interrelated trusts, exempt organizations and other business entities.

Trust Construction and Reformation
No matter how carefully a trust instrument is drafted, laws can change or other situations develop that the person establishing the trust did not anticipate. When that happens, we advise fiduciaries on their best courses of action. Often we petition the courts on their behalf to interpret or reform trust instruments. We also deal with the IRS if a court ruling changes the tax ramification of a trust.

Guiding Fiduciaries in Meeting Their Responsibilities
The financial institutions and individual fiduciaries that administer trusts, estates and guardianships have tremendous responsibilities toward their clients. For almost 90 years fiduciaries have looked to Baker Hostetler for the confidential, knowledgeable help they need to:
- Carry out their duties effectively.
- Avoid claims of conflict of interest and breach of fiduciary duty.
- Defend themselves against beneficiary litigation over trust or estate administration or investment performance.

Fellow - American College of Trust & Estate Counsel

Barry R Robinson
Baker & Hostetler LLP
Capitol Square #2100
65 E State St
Columbus OH 43215-4260
Tel: 614 462-4762
Fax: 614 462-2616
E-mail: brobinson@bakerlaw.com

Practice Strengths
* Trusts and Estates
* Charitable Planning

Barry Robinson devotes a significant portion of his practice to estate planning and administration for closely held business owners, including gift and estate tax liquidity planning, planning to provide for continuity and control within the founder's family, the use of split interest trusts designed to “leverage” the unified credit, and planning for preservation of S corporation status.

Mr. Robinson has planned and implemented many basic annual exclusion and unified credit gift programs, as well as more sophisticated gift programs involving charitable organizations, including the creation of private foundations, support organizations to public charities, and the use of donor-advised funds of community foundations. In that respect, he has planned and implemented charitable lead trusts, including charitable lead unitrusts designed to “leverage” the generation-skipping tax exemption, as well as more traditional charitable remainder trusts.

Mr. Robinson has been responsible for the administration of many estates and trusts, any number of which include various closely held business interests, and a few of which approach $75 million to $100 million in size and involve the relatively more complex and sophisticated tax and property law issues that generally are associated with trusts and estates of that size.

In that regard, he is experienced in the areas of fiduciary income tax planning and compliance, as well as the use of the various post-mortem planning tools available, such as qualified disclaimers, partial QTIP elections and other estate tax elections. He also has extensive experience in handling estate and gift tax controversies at the IRS field audit level, as well as handling a number of cases through resolution at the IRS appellate level.

Mr. Robinson’s practice has expanded into the area of trust, estate and fiduciary litigation. For example, Mr. Robinson has been primarily responsible for the successful prosecution of a significant declaratory judgment action in probate court that ultimately resolved a number of family and closely held business succession issues; the successful defense of fiduciaries and beneficiaries in actions brought against them in federal and state courts, including representation in extensive multiple party settlement negotiations with respect thereto; and the representation of the primary plaintiffs in the prosecution of significant will and trust contest, legal and accounting malpractice, and tortious interference with expectancy actions.

Mr. Robinson is a member of the boards of directors of several local small businesses and a member of the board of legal advisors to The Columbus Foundation, a community foundation. He is a Fellow in the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel. He is also a member of the American, Ohio and Columbus Bar Associations.

His efforts contributed to the enactment of Ohio Revised Code § 1340.22, et seq., which he analyzed in articles entitled, “Tax Sensitive Powers of Fiduciaries” and “Ohio Tax Sensitive Fiduciary Powers Statute: Relevant Developments,” recently published in the Probate Law Journal of Ohio by the Banks-Baldwin Law Publishing Company.