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Robert K. ("Rick") Lease

Robert K. (“Rick”) Lease concentrates his practice in the area of estates and trusts. This involves all aspects of estate planning and implementation, preparation of wills and trust agreements, estate and trust administration, representation of executors and personal representatives of decedents’ estates, trustees and guardians of incompetent persons. He also participates in many types of probate and tax litigation.

Mr. Lease was the lead attorney for the successful and efficient administration of the estate of a gentleman whose net worth exceeded $125 million.

He is experienced in counseling high net worth individuals on lifetime gifts and life insurance matters and in representing fiduciaries and wealthy individuals in the resolution of estate, gift and income tax controversies with the Internal Revenue Service and state taxing authorities.

Mr. Lease has been integrally involved on several occasions in litigation that successfully upheld the interpretation of disputed wills and trust agreements most favorable to his clients’ interests, in each case involving millions of dollars. He also has successfully defended a personal representative charged with fiduciary malpractice in the administration of an estate.

Mr. Lease was employed for five years in the Legal Department of Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (now CIGNA) in Hartford, Connecticut, before joining Baker Hostetler in 1976. He had supervisory responsibility for the company’s administration of life insurance contracts and annuities. He also served three years as in-house counsel to the Cleveland Browns, a National Football League team, as well as a major league, multi-sport stadium corporation, during which time he demonstrated the diversity of his abilities in the areas of corporate and real estate law.

By a vote of his peers, specifically other lawyers who practice in the same substantive area as does Mr. Lease, he has been selected for more than ten consecutive years as one of the Best Lawyers in America, Ohio’s “Super Lawyers,” Cleveland’s “Best Lawyers,” and similarly has been honored by Northern Ohio Live magazine as one of “Cleveland’s Best Lawyers.” He is a member of the Planned Giving Council for the Cleveland Museum of Art, is one of University Hospitals’ Diamond Advisors, and is listed in Who’s Who of American Law.