Anderson Kill P.C. is pleased to welcome two new attorneys into the firm. Ruth Ann Stauffer joins the firm's trusts and estates group in the New York office on an of counsel basis. Also in New York, Ian Bain joins the insurance recovery group and the corporate and commercial litigation group as an attorney.
Ruth Ann Stauffer administers estates and trusts in New York and New Jersey (and with the assistance of local counsel, in Connecticut and Florida) with a range of values exceeding $100 million at the top end. Her services include preparation of estate tax returns, conduct of estate tax audits, post-mortem tax planning, and extensions regarding payment of estate tax pursuant to IRC Sections 6161 and 6166 and similar state statutes.
In more than two decades of T&E practice, Ruth Ann has drafted and analyzed receipt, release, refunding and indemnification agreements in connection with settlement of estates and trusts; prepared and reviewed gift tax returns; decanted trusts, including drafting of documents and analysis of permissible scope of decanting in light of possible gift and GST tax issues; drafted wills, trust instruments and LLC operating agreements; analyzed wills and trust instruments in connection with estate planning and post mortem tax planning; prepared, reviewed, and provided advice regarding accountings for trusts; settled estates and trusts with New York State's Attorney General; and reviewed federal and state fiduciary income tax returns for estates and trusts.
In addition to her private practice experience, Ruth Ann worked as an associate attorney in the Real Estate Division of the New York City Housing Authority. In a hiatus from legal work in the mid-1990s, she served as Social Services Coordinator in Moscow, Russia for the Mennonite Central Committee, an international relief and development organization. There she coordinated humanitarian aid shipments to Russia and Ukraine. She has a working knowledge of Russian and French and is fluent in German.
Ian Bain is a 2016 Columbia Law School graduate who comes to Anderson Kill from a New York law firm, where he concentrated his practice in sports law. His experience includes drafting Post-Hearing Briefs for NFL Player-Agent Arbitration disputes; handling NFL player concussion-related injury protection and contract claims; bringing an arbitration for a professional tennis player against the WTA; and drafting complaints, grievance letters, §2255 habeas petitions, summary judgment motions, arbitration demands, and an opposition to a motion to dismiss in a federal civil rights action for various athlete, sports agency, and other clients.
Previously, Ian served as a Law Clerk in the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office in San Jose, CA, where he drafted and argued motions to suppress and preliminary hearings for the Misdemeanor, Gang, General and Violent Felonies Units. He subsequently worked as an Honors Law Clerk in the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office in Baltimore, Maryland, where he drafted opposition papers to post-conviction relief petitions for the Narcotics Unit and investigated Police misconduct and identified potential Fourth Amendment violations for the Evidence Review Unit.