Levin College of Law
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Lee-Ford Tritt

James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Federal Taxation
Professor of Law
Director of the Graduate Tax Program
Director, Program for Estate Planning and Director, Estate Planning Practice Program
Associate Director, Program on Children and Families

Expertise

Art Law  • Artificial Intelligence  • Business Succession  • Charitable Entities and Charitable Giving  • Estate Planning  • Estates & Trusts  • Federal Income Tax  • Federal Transfer Taxes (Estate, Gift and GST)  • Fiduciary Duties  • Marriage Equality  • Probate and Fiduciary Administration  • Wills  • 

About

Lee-ford Tritt, NYU School of Law, J.D., LL.M. (taxation) is The James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Federal Taxation and Director of the Graduate Tax Programs at the University of Florida College of Law. In addition, Lee-ford is the Director of the Program 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. Lee-ford also has served in many leadership positions for the ABA RPTE and Tax Sections; the President of the American Association of Law Schools’ Trusts & Estates Division; and 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. 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 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. 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 currently serves as expert witness in complex, high-value wills and trusts contests and fiduciary administration disputes. Lee-ford has published several books and chapters as well as 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

  • Trusts & Estates
  • Federal Income Taxation
  • Federal Estate & Gift Taxation
  • Estate Planning
  • Taxation of Property transactions
  • Graduate Tax Research Seminar
  • Fiduciary Administration
  • Introduction to U.S. Tax Law
  • Advanced Topics in Estate Planning
  • Organizational Theory and the Law

Publications

Law Review Articles:

An Organizational Theory of Business Trusts (in progress).

Shepherds and Stewards: The Parable of the Trust Fiduciary (forthcoming 2026)

Dispensable Irrevocable Trusts: The Decline of Trust Exceptionalism (forthcoming 2025).

Data Trusts: The Applicability of Fiduciary Law to Shepherds of Data (forthcoming 2025).

In the Interest of Justice: Judicial Overreach in Trust Construction (forthcoming 2025).

The Curious Case of the James Brown Estate, 92 Geo. Was L. Rev. 101 (2024).

The Use of AI-Based Technologies in Arbitrating Trust Disputes, 58 Wake Forest. Rev. 1203 (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).

University of Florida Levin College of Law
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Gainesville, FL 32611
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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.