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Robert K. Lease

Robert K. 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 personal representatives of decedents’ estates, trustees, and guardians of incompetent persons. He participates in many types of probate and tax litigation.

Mr. Lease is experienced in counseling persons on lifetime gifts and life insurance matters and in representing fiduciaries and 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 which successfully upheld the interpretation of disputed wills and trust agreements most favorable to his clients’ interests, in each case involving hundreds of thousands 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 in consecutive years as one of America’s Best Lawyers, and similarly has been honored by Northern Ohio Live magazine as one of Cleveland’s best lawyers.