Our neighborhood storefront lawyer by Brian Abate
T
hough I’ve been fortunate enough to never need a lawyer, it has always looked like a very interesting job based on the cases I’ve read about or seen on television.
This month, Jessica Wilson (of Jessica Wilson Law Office at 221 Columbia St.) was kind enough to talk to me about her career, and her journey from the west coast to Cobble Hill, while also giving some important advice. Right now, Wilson does trust and estate work exclusively. That includes estate planning which means wills and trusts as well as surrogate court proceedings (when someone passes away either with or without a will.) Additionally, she does guardianship proceedings and gives free legal consultations. Wilson also dispelled the myth that the government can take someone’s money if they pass away without a will. “That isn’t the case, well, usually not,” Wilson said. “There are strict guidelines on where the money goes. For example, if you’re married with no kids, 100 percent goes to your spouse. If you are married with children, then the first $50,000 plus half goes to the spouse and the other half goes to the children. They’ll look for your bloodline. If you’re not married and have no children it can go to your parents. If your parents aren’t alive, it can go to your siblings. “It goes all the way out to first cousins and if there are no relatives alive, then it would go to the state. In an interesting case I had recently, somebody died and the closest relatives were first cousins and we had to do a genealogy review to find out who these people were. We ended up finding one cousin who had never even met the person who died but he ended up inheriting some of the money.” In addition to some interesting cases, Wilson had a unique path to becoming
an estate lawyer. She grew up on Long Island and attended law school at Lewis & Clark in Portland but ended up moving to New York City to be closer to her family.
“My aunt is also a lawyer and she does exactly this, trust and estates,” Wilson said. “I did trust and estates for a little while right after graduating and I wanted to challenge myself and thought ‘I want to be a litigator.’ I worked for the district attorney’s office in Brooklyn. I did it for a decade and it was extremely stressful but I also enjoyed it.
“I know prosecutors get a bad rap but if I ever encountered a bad search or I didn’t believe a witness, I could always go to my supervisor and they always dismissed the case so I had a good experience in that way. I was in a lot of different areas while I was there. I did grand jury for a long time, I was a felony assistant, I did a lot of fraud work in the racketeering division and then I did environmental law for the city. “For the last four years I was there, I was in the conviction review unit where we looked at old homicide convictions from the ‘80s and ‘90s where someone was claiming they were innocent. While I was there, we exonerated 20 people.” Some of the cases Wilson reviewed involved Louis Scarcella, a former NYPD detective who was accused of framing numerous people for murder. Many convictions linked to him have since been overturned. Wilson also explained why she decided to go back to doing trust and estate work. “After Trump became president, I realized I couldn’t work for the man anymore so I quit and became a criminal defense attorney for a short while,” Wilson said. “It was very stressful and I didn’t love it. While I was still doing that I went on a yoga retreat with my
aunt and she said ‘why don’t you come back to doing trusts and estates.’ And that’s just what I did. She has a big firm and I was of counsel at her firm, brushing up on everything, and then I opened my own place here about three and a half years ago.” I also asked about the transition from the fast-paced environment of working for the district attorney to working in a much calmer environment on Columbia Street.
“It’s a very neighborhood practice and people just wander in off the street,” Wilson said. “A lot of clients are parents with young children. I kept working during the panJessica Wilson at her Columbia Street office. demic and it was actually very busy. Part of it was everyone being stuck in their homes but people too late for anything to be done. It’s also were also scared.” very sad to be dealing with clients who Additionally, working during the pandemic created some challenges.
“It was a lot more work,” Wilson said. “There was a lot of faxing back and forth and I’d drive to people’s houses to pick up or drop off documents. I couldn’t have the office open which was a challenge but I was happy to be working and I live in the neighborhood which made it easier.”
Wilson then told me about some of the best parts of her work as well as some of the toughest parts of her work. “I think it’s very difficult to deal with people when money is involved and it’s very tough to see families coming apart and fighting,” Wilson said. “Sometimes there isn’t any planning ahead and everyone is scrambling to do something at the last minute when it’s too late. I would advise anyone to plan ahead to avoid ending up in a situation where it’s
have lost a loved one.
“The best parts are I really enjoy working with neighborhood people. I love this neighborhood and I also enjoy working with seniors to put together aging-in-place plans. I think age is a great leveler but there are ways for seniors to stay in their homes as they get older. I like working with a lot of millennial couples with minor children. They’re all very interesting and they all have very interesting jobs in the tech world. “The best part of my practice is that I’m my own boss. I don’t have to answer to anyone! After being in the bureaucracy of the district attorney’s office I value my independence the most.” Jessica Wilson Attorney-at-Law:
221 Columbia St, between Union and Sackett,(212) 739-1736 Appointments: jessicawilsonlaw.com
Italian mental health issues surface in Africa
L
by Dario "Pio" Muccilli, Star-Revue EU correspondent
ast June 14th Italy Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi di Maio took part as the guest of honor at a ceremony laying the first stone for a psychiatric hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
to abandon asylums in 1978. Such a revolution later influenced the WHO (World Health Organization, ed) programs on mental health and it’s still one of the greatest contributions to modern psychiatry.
The New Uhuru International Neuro Psychiatric Hospital has been financed by the Italian private health corporation San Donato Group and it will house more than six hundred patients, aiming to become a leading hub for psychiatry in central-east Africa.
The associations released on June 21th an open-letter to the Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the already mentioned Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi di Maio and the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza.
Up til here, this is not a big piece of news. A Minister Foreign Affairs is used to join many similar events and this is witnessed by the lack of attention given to the ceremony by almost all international agencies. Nevertheless, soon after the event, the so-called hospital was accused of being a madhouse and the Italian government was charged with endorsing psychiatric practices banned in its own country. The charges have come from the associations belonging to the National Committee for Mental Health, which promote Dr. Franco Basaglia’s (19241980) approach to psychiatry, a community-based model of mental healthcare, that had driven Italy
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There they asked three fundamental questions about the building of the hospital: “How is it possible that the Minister of Foreign Affairs endorses a project which goes against all the competent laws and strategies in force in our country, as well as the international conventions signed by Italy in regard of the rights of psychic and social disabilities and the WHO’s guidelines on mental health policy?"; “Did the Minister of Health give his consent to such a political endorsement given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs that conflicts with his national guidelines?”; “Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs, directly or not, finance the operation, or has it already done it?”. None of the answers received a reply, although they
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were widely spread through most of the national media. Surely the situation is much more embarrassing for the Italian government as the president of the Hospital’s moneylender, the San Donato Group, is Angelino Alfano, former politician and predecessor of the incumbent Minister Luigi di Maio. Such an entrenched net of relationships, alongside the stunning silence of the involved members of the Government, raises many worries not only about the fate of patients with mental illness in Africa, but also in regard to the recognition of the value of Basaglia’s revolution in Italy. The country has already seen various attacks at the level of regional governments to community-based psychiatry in favor of great hospitals similar to the old asylums, but the Government has formally kept the spirit of Basaglia in its guidelines. That is why the operation in Kenya has become an huge concern for the afore mentioned associations, which deeply feel like such a project might be the first signal of a widespread erosion of practice.
July 2022, Page 11
