Maryann Thomas

About

Maryann is an attorney in Schneider Smeltz Spieth Bell's Trusts & Estates and Taxation practice groups. 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 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.
Maryann spent her entire legal career at Spieth, Bell, McCurdy & Newell Co., L.P.A. until it became Schneider Smeltz Spieth Bell LLP in 2016. She enjoys volunteering for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and attending programs at the City Club of Cleveland and Cleveland Museum of Natural History.