Senior Counsel

San Diego

Direct: 619.219.8078

Office: 619.219.5335

abastedo@buchalter.com

Bar Admissions

California

Overview

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Alexis Bastedo is a Senior Counsel in the Firm’s San Diego office and a member of the Corporate and Tax, Benefits & Estate Planning practice groups. She primarily focuses her practice in the areas of complex and sophisticated estate planning, probate, trust administration, and wealth strategy planning.

Ms. Bastedo is a Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. Only approximately five percent of California’s attorneys are certified specialists by the State Bar.

As a former personal injury civil litigator and business owner, Ms. Bastedo’s efforts resulted in more than $25 million in settlements and verdicts.

Finalize of Complicated Probates and Trust Administrators

  • Represented a trustee to effectively administer a trust five years after her mother died and her brother spent those five years failing to properly administer the trust. Investigated all assets and found a successful and creative way to resolve all issues and bring finality to the family.
  • Represented an administrator to successfully end a messy probate after the first administrator had passed away during the administration and where the decedent failed to finalize a sixteen year old ancillary probate of his mother’s estate in another state.
  • Represented a trustee to successfully complete a trust administration, despite barriers and significant emotional strife presented by the trustee’s siblings.
  • Represented a husband and wife to create an estate plan right before the husband died of a terminal illness, saving at least $200,000 in taxes for the wife, sparing the widow from a two-year probate process, and assuring the surviving spouse did not have a financial mess after the husband passed away.
  • Represented a financial advisor accused of fraud to settle a probate lawsuit against him, including reimbursement of attorney’s fees and expungement of his FINRA record.
  • Represented trustees accused of breach of trust to successfully end the lawsuit with total a complete release of all liability and no out of pocket costs or attorney’s fees.

Reduce Tax Liabilities for Families

  • Represented a surviving spouse to successfully pursue a petition to modify her irrevocable trust to remove the bypass trust, to get a step up in tax basis at her passing, and ultimately saved her daughter at least $300,000 in mitigated capital gains taxes.
  • Successfully restated trusts to remove bypass trusts to avoid trapping capital gains taxes.
  • Use a variety of techniques to save several high net worth families millions of dollars in estate tax liabilities.

Protect Incapacitated Persons

  • Represented a trustee/son to lock down a trust to prevent further amendments after father clearly lacked mental capacity and his ex-wife remarried him, to prevent financial fraud.
  • Represented a woman who successfully pursued a voluntary conservatorship of her estate, by maintaining her mental capacity but also recognizing she had diminished capacity and needed assistance from a professional fiduciary.

Reduce Time and Expense of Probate

  • Represented several widows and widowers avoid probate with spousal property petitions to avoid a lengthy probate process and help bring closure to financial matters after the death of their spouse.
  • Represented several trustees to successfully retitle homes in the name of the trust with Heggstad petitions, also known as 850 petitions to save time, money, and stress by avoiding probate.
  • Created numerous estate plans with open communication to help reduce family strife, especially sibling conflict.

Admissions

  • California
  • U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
  • U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
  • U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
  • U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California

Education

  • Thomas Jefferson School of Law, J.D.
  • Michigan State University, B.A., Public Policy

  • Member of Trusts and Estates Section of the California Lawyers Association
  • Member of Probate Attorneys of San Diego (PASD)
  • Secretary and Board Member of the Tom Homann Law Association (THLA)
  • Member of Lawyers Club of San Diego

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