Life and estate planning in New York City, Huntington, and Fire Island Pines, for more than three decades.
Ralph went to law school intending to become a diplomat. Instead, his first job took him to the Legal Aid Society, where a mentor showed him the impact a lawyer could have at an AIDS clinic, supporting people through illness and death at a time when much of the world was looking away. The diplomatic career never happened. The work that replaced it became his life.
When Ralph joined Sheryl’s practice, he brought that experience with him: the years of the AIDS crisis, his perspective as a gay man who understands what it means to live outside the mainstream, and an ability to hear each person’s particular story. Nearly thirty-three years in, he is still learning from his clients every day.
Some of the work he is proudest of is also the quietest. For clients who have no one else to help them manage their health and finances through illness, Ralph has served as trustee, health care agent, and court-appointed guardian, walking beside many of them through long-term illness and death, and witnessing, for others, the application of a lifetime’s work after they are gone.
“I listen more than I speak.”
Every client arrives with a different life. These are some of the lives he plans for.
Ralph seeks to understand what makes a person happy, how they think about money, and how they feel about the people around them, because a plan that ignores those things is not really theirs. He supports each client's right to make decisions that others might not make, and he reminds people who have spent their lives being told what they should or must do that they get to live their own unique life. Underneath all of it is a belief he returns to often: life is brief, and joy and kindness matter.
Ralph is the author of "Elder Law and Estate Planning for Gay and Lesbian Individuals and Couples," published in the Marquette Elder's Advisor (2004), and lectures for bar associations, universities, and community organizations on estate planning, elder law, guardianship, and legal issues affecting marriage and aging within the LGBTQ+ community.
Admitted to practice law in New York, Maryland, and the District of Columbia
1990
Bachelor of Business Administration, Pace University
1993
Juris Doctor, Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America
2026
Ralph works from the New York City office, on Park Avenue South, and sees clients in Fire Island Pines.
