Matthew Bender Practice Guide: California Trust Litigation

Shirley L. Kovar’s practice focuses on complex trust and estate disputes, including international trusts and estates litigation. Ms. Kovar is a Certified Specialist in Trusts and Estates, by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. She is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), where she has chaired the Transfer Tax Study Committee. In this capacity she gave oral and written testimony before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on federal estate tax reform in April 2008. She is presently a member of ACTEC’s Litigation Committee. She has served as Chair of the Litigation Committee for the Executive Committee of the State Bar Trusts and Estates Section (TEXCOM), where she also served as the Liaison between TEXCOM and the California Law Revision Commission on no contest clause reform. Ms. Kovar is also an Academician in the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law. Her international activities have included a presentation on settlement agreements to international attorneys in Salzburg, Austria. She has been selected as a SuperLawyer (top 5 percent of lawyers in Southern California) from 2007 (when the award was first given) through 2010. Other honors include election to the Board of Governors of the University of Kansas Law School (two terms). Ms. Kovar has twice given presentations at the Annual Meeting of ACTEC Fellows, as well as other numerous CLE presentations, including the University of Southern California Annual Conference. She has written extensively in the areas of trusts and estates disputes and federal estate tax reform. Ms. Kovar graduated in 1974 from the University of Kansas Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif, as Editor-in-Chief of the Kansas Law Review, and was co-recipient of the Samuel Mellinger Award, awarded by the law faculty for Leadership, Scholarship and Service, and by the University of Kansas as Outstanding Woman Graduate in Academics for all graduate schools at the University of Kansas.