Lee-Ford Tritt
David H. Levin Chair in Family Law
Professor of Law
Director of Tax Programs
Director, Center for Estate Planning and Director, Estate Planning Practice Program
Associate Director, Center on Children and Families
Email:
Tritt@law.ufl.edu
Phone:
(352) 273-0952
Expertise
Art Law • Artificial Intelligence • Business Succession • Charitable Entities and Charitable Giving • Estate Planning • Estates & Trusts • Federal Transfer Taxes (Estate, Gift and GST) • Fiduciary Duties • Legislation • Marriage Equality • Probate and Fiduciary Administration • Statutory Interpretation • Wills •
About
Lee-ford Tritt, NYU School of Law, J.D., LL.M. (taxation), is a law professor at the University of Florida College of Law and the David H. Levin Chair of Law. In addition, Lee-ford is the Director of the Graduate Tax Programs, Director of the Center for Estate Planning, and Director of the Estate Planning Practice Certificate Program. Lee-ford is an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. In addition, Lee-ford has served in many positions for the ABA RPTE and Tax Sections. He also served as the President of the American Association of Law Schools’ Trusts & Estates Division as well as an advisor for the Committee on an Act on the Recovery of Stolen Cultural and Artistic Property for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Before joining UF College of Law in 2005, Lee-ford spent eight years in the New York City trusts and estates departments of Davis, Polk & Wardwell and Milbank, Tweed. Lee-ford’s strong commitment to students and the practice of law has helped earn him Professor of the Year for the academic years 2008/2009; 2009/2010; 2010/2011; 2011/2012, 2012/2013 and 2014/2015. In 2015, Lee-ford was honored with the John Marshall Bar Association’s College of Law Lifetime Achievement Award in Teaching. He has also been recognized as an Outstanding Mentor by BALSA in 2008, 2011, and 2015. In addition, he received the University of Florida’s Presidential Award for Excellence in Education in 2011 and the University’s Impact Award in 2012. Lee-ford has published several books and many academic articles. He is frequently cited as an authority in newspapers, magazines, and academic articles. Lee-ford is a frequent lecturer across the country on various estate planning and tax issues, including presentations for the ABA’s RPTE Law Section’s annual meetings, the ABA’s Tax Section’s annual meetings, the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, the Notre Dame Tax and Estate Planning Institute, and Bloomberg BNA Tax & Accounting.
Education
LL.M., in Taxation, New York University School of Law;
J.D., New York University School of Law; and
B.A., University of the South
Teaching and Scholarship
Trusts & Estates, Federal Income Taxation; Fiduciary Administration, Federal Estate & Gift Taxation; Estate Planning; Advanced Topics in Estate Planning; Graduate Tax Research Seminar; Taxation of Property Transactions, Introduction to U.S. Tax Law, and Organizational Theory and the Law
Courses
- Federal Income Taxation
- Federal Estate & Gift Taxation
- Trusts & Estates
- Estate Planning
- Graduate Tax Research Seminar
- Fiduciary Administration
- Advanced Topics in Estate Planning
- Organizational Theory and the Law
Publications
Law Review Articles:
An Organizational Theory of Business Trusts (forthcoming 2025).
The Decline of Trust Exceptionalism (forthcoming 2025).
Data Trusts: Their Use and Limitations (forthcoming 2024).
The Curious Case of the James Brown Estate, 92 Geo. Wash L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024).
The Use of AI-Based Technologies in Arbitrating Trust Disputes, 58 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1203 (2023).
In the Interest of Justice: Judicial Overreach in Trust Construction (forthcoming 2023).
Litigation Blues for Red-States Trusts: Judicial Construction Issues for Wills and Trusts, 72 Fla. L. Rev. 841 (2020).
Reimagining the Business Trust as a Sustainable Business Form, 97 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1 (2019)(with Ryan Scott Teschner).
The Rise of Business Trusts in Sustainable Neo-Innovative Economies (forthcoming U. Cin. L. Rev. 2019)(Symposium)(with Ryan Scott Teschner).
The Stranger-to-the Marriage Doctrine, 2019 Wis. L. Rev. 101.
Amazon Delivers Diversity: Geographical and Social Influences on Corporate Embeddedness, 16 Berkeley Bus. L.J. 1 (2019)(with Ryan Scott Teschner).
United States v. Windsor: The Marital Deduction that Changed the Marriage, 42 ACTEC Law J 2001 (2017).
Moving Forward by Looking Back: The Retroactive Application of Obergefell, 2016 Wis. L. Rev. 874 (2017).
The History, Impact, and Future of the Benefit-of-the-Beneficiary Rule, Parts I & II, Koren Est. Tax & Pers. Fin. Plan Update (2015).
Dispatches from the Trenches of America’s Great Gun Trust Wars, 108 Nw. U. L. Rev. 743 (2014).
Windsor’s Wake: Non-Traditional Estate Planning Issues for Non-Traditional Families, 48 U. Miami Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning ¶ 11 (2014 University of Miami).
Promoting Trust in Trusts & Estates, 5 International Journal of Arts & Sciences 751 (2012)(with Michael R. Siebecker).
The Limitations of An Economic Agency Cost Theory of Trust Law, 32 Cardozo L. Rev. 2579 (2011).
- Named one of the top ten Estate & Gift Tax Articles of 2011, 134 Tax Notes 1453 (Mar. 2012).
Technical Correction or Tectonic Shift: Competing Default Rule Theories Under the New Uniform Probate Code, 61 Ala. L. Rev. 273 (2010).
Sperms and Estates: An Unadulterated Functionally Based Approach to Parent-Child Property Succession, 62 SMU L. Rev. 367 (2009).
Liberating Estates Law from the Constraints of Copyright, 38 Rutgers L.J. 109 (2006).
Other Articles
Estate Planning Construction Issues Post-Obergefell, Trusts & Estates Magazine, November 2020, at 18.
Benefit-of-the-Beneficiary Rule, 34 Probate & Property 2 (March/April 2020)(with Mary O’Reilly).
Statutory Copyright Terminations and Artist-Endowed Foundations, National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations (Aspen Institute 2013).
A Question of Value, The Evolution of Formula Clauses Through the Decades, 47 Real Prop. Trust & Estate L.J. 467 (June 2013)(with Patrick J. Duffy).
What Do Trustees Owe the Remainder Beneficiaries of Revocable Trusts, Real Prop. Trust & Estate Law eReport (June 2013).
Six Important Cases of the Past Year, Real Prop. Trust & Estate Law eReport (June 2012).
Parent-Child Property Succession, Trusts & Estates Magazine, Aug. 2009, at 18.
Books and Book Chapters:
Fiduciary Law, Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Law (Oxford University Press) (forthcoming).
Legislative Approaches to Trust Arbitration in the United States, in Arbitration of Internal Trust Disputes: Issues in National and International Law (S.I. Strong ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Healy, Gassman, Blattmachr, Tritt, Crotty, Arango and Brown, The Legal Guide to NFA Firearms and Gun Trusts, (Haddon Hall Publishing, 2016).
The Law of Succession: Wills, Trusts, and Estates, contributing chapter author on transfer taxes (Foundation Press 2013).
Tritt, Wright and Weisberg, Florida Probate Code and Related Provisions with Commentary (Aspen Publishers 2010).