A District of Columbia lawyer has been barred from taking legal fees from a former D.C. judge’s estate as he defends himself against a lawsuit brought by the judge’s children.
Robert Alvord claimed that he had a right to dip into the former estate of Gerard Reilly after Reilly’s grown children, John and Margaret Reilly Heffern, sued him as executor of the estate.
But a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals disagreed and ordered the estate’s funds frozen while the contentious lawsuit is pending.
According to the appellate decision, published last week, the Reilly children sued Alvord in 2003, shortly after the death of their stepmother, Dorothy O. Reilly. Both children had already inherited half of their father’s estate — including a share in the multimillion-dollar Cleveland Park mansion he owned — after Gerard Reilly died in an automobile accident in a courthouse parking garage in 1995.
Reilly was former chief judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals before retiring in the early 1990s.
Dorothy Reilly originally named John and Margaret as her heirs, but changed her will shortly before she died in 2002, according to court documents.
Alvord, who had drafted Gerard and Dorothy Reilly’s wills, was named executor of Dorothy Reilly’s estate.
The Reilly children claimed that their stepmother had promised to leave her estate to them after she died. They accused Alvord of breach of contract and asked for the rental value of the Cleveland Park mansion, as well as a division of the home.
The home was sold for $2.8 million last year.
Separately, the Reilly children accused Alvord of legal malpractice and a breach of fiduciary duty. They asked a lower court judge to order Alvord to return money he’d already taken for legal fees and to stop him from taking any more legal fees out of the estate. The judge let Alvord keep the fees he’d already withdrawn, but forbade him from taking any more.
Alvord appealed, claiming, among other things, that Dorothy Reilly’s will authorized legal fees and the age-old “American Rule,” which holds that each party in a lawsuit has to pay their own legal fees.
Led by Associate Judge Noel Kramer, the appellate court disagreed.
“The fact that attorneys’ fees are expressly authorized by the trust is no help to Mr. Alvord,” Kramer wrote in the 17-page decision. “The potential harm [to the Reilly children] is irreparable precisely because Mr. Alvord had the legal right to use trust assets to pay attorney’s fees.”
The case now returns to D.C. Superior Court for trial.
