Legal Help For Victims' Families

By Andrew Smith
Newsday
October 2, 2001

The intimidating legal maze facing survivors of Long Islanders lost in the World Trade Center has been made easier to navigate by attorneys' providing free services and Surrogate Courts' streamlining the probating of victims' wills.

As a result, the process of declaring missing people legally dead and executing their estates, normally something that would have taken three years or more, can be done in weeks now for trade center victims.

"We're trying to do our part," said Eric Kramer, a Uniondale estate attorney. "This is the way we feel we can give back to the community."

Both the Nassau and Suffolk bar associations have made free legal advice available for survivors who need to get death certificates, probate wills or just figure out how to handle the affairs of someone missing and presumed dead.

In Nassau, the bar association is holding legal clinics today and tomorrow at its office in Mineola, at the corner of 15th and West streets. Attorneys will be there for survivors from 3 to 8 p.m. today and 9a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow.

The president of the Suffolk County Bar Association, George Roach, has enlisted estate attorneys who will work for free for survivors of trade center victims. Suffolk survivors can call the bar association at 631-234-5511 to get an attorney.

Irwin Scherago, a member of the Estate and Trusts Group at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Schlissel, LLP, said victims' relatives need to focus on two things. The first is getting a death certificate for the missing person, he said. Normally, a person has to be missing three years before he or she can be declared dead, but that rule has been suspended in this case.

The second thing is simpler, Scherago said. Spouses who find themselves running out of money while waiting for access to insurance benefits or trust funds should simply help themselves to any joint bank accounts they have with the victim, he said.

Similarly, Scherago said many spouses and adult children may have written power of attorney for victims. If they do, he said they can use it to get at least partial access to brokerage and other accounts the victim had, he said.

To get a death certificate, a survivor needs to prove his or her family relationship to the victim with a marriage certificate or a birth certificate. Then an attorney can help fill out an affidavit explaining why the victim was believed to be in the trade center during the attack, with any documentation the survivor has to support that claim. That can take many forms, such as a letter from the victim's employer or paycheck stubs, Scherago said.