Bruce Johnson

Bruce C. Johnson has been a trusts and estates lawyer in New York City since 1977. He continues to practice in the areas of estate and trust administration, estate and gift tax, estate planning, and trusts and estates litigation, including Surrogate’s Court matters of all kinds.

After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Bruce began his career at the  Chadbourne law firm, currently known as Norton Rose Fulbright. 

Having come to Wilk Auslander in 2004, he is the longest-serving member of the firm’s trusts and estates department. Bruce has worked on contested and uncontested probates (both as a lawyer for the proponent and as lawyer for the objectant), contested and uncontested judicial accountings, will constructions, termination of a charitable trust, proceedings for substitution of fiduciaries, Article 81 guardianships (representing guardians, court evaluators, and court examiners) under the Mental Hygiene Law, standby guardian appointments, settlement of a wrongful death action, advance commission applications, approval of contracts of artists who are minors, and other matters.

A native of Moline, Illinois, Bruce was a newspaper reporter and editor in Davenport, Iowa, for several years before entering law school. He has served on the boards of several not-for-profit organizations, including the Canterbury Choral Society in New York City, the University of Illinois Alumni Association, and the Phi Sigma Kappa Foundation in Indianapolis. He is active in the local alumni organizations of both of his universities. An avid singer, he currently performs with The Master Voices Chorale and his church choir.

• Represented an adoptive son in opposing an attempt by his adoptive father to abrogate the adoption.
• Established the family tree and the entitlement of a decedent’s heirs to inherit his intestate estate in a proceeding that involved traveling to Germany to take testimony on kinship.
• Successfully concluded a judicial accounting in an estate worth more than $400 million.
• Obtained reformation of a will in order to preserve a decedent’s generation-skipping transfer tax exemption.
• Completed estate plans for families having one or more members as non-U.S. citizens employed at the United Nations.
• Obtained the removal of an executor/trustee after the fiduciary pleaded guilty to several federal felonies and won a settlement for the estate after it was disclosed that the fiduciary had improperly withdrawn funds for his own use.
• Drafted bylaws and helped obtain incorporation and tax-exempt status for a charity devoted to fighting AIDS in India.