Current Employment Position(s)

Partner

Lawyer Overview

Judith is a partner in the firm and currently a member of its management committee. Her practice focuses on taxation, wills and trusts, and estate administration. Her specialties include — in addition to wills, trusts and estates — general business matters involving corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies; the areas of charitable and tax planning; and the resolution of tax controversies and representation of corporate and individual taxpayers before all divisions (civil and criminal) of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Pennsylvania Department of Revenue.

A native of Allentown, Judith graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College, and earned her law degree at the Washington College of Law of The American University, where she wrote for the American University Law Review. Judith received a graduate law degree (LL.M. in Taxation with concentration in Estate Planning) from Villanova University Law School. She served as judicial clerk to the late Judge David E. Mellenberg of the Court of Common Pleas of Lehigh County. She is also a graduate of the Pushkin Institute, Moscow, Russia.

Judith has recently handled the following matters for her clients:

• Administration of large estates and complex trusts
• Preparation of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, living wills and related tax-saving vehicles for high net worth individual clients and business owners
• Business succession planning
• Sale of a client’s business to a publicly traded company
• Negotiation and resolution, on behalf of an individual taxpayer, of a multimillion dollar tax shelter assessment by IRS
• Representation of estates, trusts, and beneficiaries in Orphans’ Court matters
• Resolution of collection efforts — including liens, levies, garnishments, and trust fund recovery penalties — by IRS, the PA Department of Revenue, and the NJ Division of Taxation against corporate and individual clients
• Representation of individual taxpayers in a federal and state criminal tax case.

Judith recently completed 10 years as a member of the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority board of governors, where she chaired the Personnel and Law committee and was vice-chair of the finance committee. She is currently president of the Fund to Benefit Children ? Youth, Inc.; board operations committee chair of the Allentown Symphony, where she has served as a board member since 1993; and a board member of the Lehigh County Agricultural Society.

She recently joined the Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Judith also serves as board secretary of the Estate Planning Council of the Lehigh Valley. She taught a business law course entitled “Wills, Trusts and Estates” at Penn State University’s Lehigh Valley Campus from 1993 to 2000. Judith also serves on the board of the Lehigh Valley chapter of the Society of Financial Service Professionals.

An enthusiast of all kinds of theater — whether Greek tragedy, Elizabethan drama, or Broadway musicals — she is the originator of and one of four partners who now produce the firm’s holiday show, an annual musical revue of the firm and its attorneys which has become a cherished tradition.

Areas of Practice

• Estate
• Taxation
• Trust Planning and Administration

Bar Admissions

• Virginia, 1987
• U.S. District Court Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 1990

Education

• American University, Washington College of Law, Washington, District of Columbia, 1986
  J.D.
• Bryn Mawr College, 1983
  A.B.

Address

The Paragon Centre
Suite 300
1611 Pond Road
Allentown, PA 18104-2258

Phones

(610) 391-1800

Faxes

(610) 391-1805

Emails

Contact Us

Websites

http://www.thslaw.com