Maryann Thomas Email & Phone Number

Cleveland, Oh, Us

Valley City, Ohio

Maryann serves as counsel for a single-family office in the Cleveland area. In her role, she provides counsel to the family and its businesses on a wide variety of family enterprise matters. As a Trusts & Estates attorney by trade, she provides legal counsel in the areas of estate planning, trust and estate administration, and related taxation, to the family and their private trust company. She also brings awareness to various stakeholders in the family enterprise regarding the impact of long-term estate plans, particularly ownership of a family business in trust, as well as a variety of governance matters. Maryann began her career as an attorney in the Trusts & Estates and Tax practice groups at Schneider Smeltz Spieth Bell LLP in Downtown Cleveland. Maryann continues to be active in the Trusts & Estates legal community as a member of various bar associations and attorney discussion groups. She is a past Chair of the CMBA Estate Planning, Probate & Trust Law section. She currently serves as a voting member of the Ohio State Bar Association Estate Planning, Trust, and Probate Law Section and Council which focuses on the development of Ohio legislation and intervention primarily in the areas of probate and trust law, and related taxation.

Cleveland/Akron, Ohio Area

Maryann is an attorney in the Trusts & Estates and Taxation practice groups of Schneider Smeltz Spieth Bell LLP (formerly Spieth, Bell, McCurdy & Newell and Schneider, Smeltz, Ranney & LaFond). She works with individuals and families to develop estate plans using a range of simple and sophisticated estate planning methods. She also provides counsel to individual and corporate executors and trustees in the administration of trusts and estates, including probate administration. Part of her practice also includes the review and preparation of estate tax returns, gift and generation-skipping tax returns, and income tax returns for fiduciaries of trusts and estates.What drew Maryann to her particular field was, in part, the ongoing challenge of keeping up with our country’s ever-changing tax laws and the continuing development of trust and estate law across the states. She particularly enjoys interacting with clients in order to achieve their goals, whether it is the creation of an estate plan, the administration of a trust or estate for a loved one who has passed, or figuring out a difficult tax issue. Some of her most complex counseling has been given to individual and corporate trustees in the resolution of specific administration issues of ongoing trusts. To this end, she has worked with trustees in trust modification actions in probate court, private settlement agreements among beneficiaries, the decanting of one trust to another, the removal or resignation of a trustee in favor of a successor trustee, and advised on other methods to solve various administration issues.

J.D., Cum Laude

B.A., Magna Cum Laude, Political Science And History

High School