Brendan Thompson

Brendan Thompson is a Senior Associate in the Trusts & Estates practice. His work concentrates on complex estate administration, charitable gift planning, and fiduciary disputes — the probate-court-facing end of the group's practice. He handles multi-state administrations, contested accountings, and the construction questions that arise when a decades-old trust instrument meets a modern family-ownership structure. Thompson earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2015 and his B.A. from Middlebury College in 2012. He joined Oak, Elm & Birch directly from law school and spent his first three years working directly under founding partner Edwin Birch on a series of large-tract estate administrations involving conservation-easement-encumbered real property. That apprenticeship, which he has described as the most educational stretch of his career, continues to shape his approach to estate work where the principal asset is land rather than securities. He is one of the few T&E practitioners in Hartford who will draft a qualified conservation contribution deduction and defend it at audit without outside counsel. He was promoted to Senior Associate in 2022 and now handles matters under the supervision of practice group head Winona Thorpe. Within the group he leads the charitable-gift-planning subpractice and supervises an associate and a paralegal. ## Representative Matters - Lead associate on the estate administration of a multi-generational Connecticut landowner, including federal estate tax return preparation (co-counsel with the Tax practice), qualified conservation contribution documentation, and probate proceedings in Hartford and Litchfield Districts, 2022–2024. - Represented the successor trustee in a construction proceeding in the Hartford Probate Court concerning a 1968 trust instrument with ambiguous per stirpes language, 2023. - Advised a Connecticut-based private foundation on a § 4945 expenditure-responsibility program for international grantmaking, including drafting of grantee agreements and the foundation's annual compliance procedures. - Drafted and administered a testamentary charitable remainder unitrust for the estate of a Farmington Valley donor, coordinating with the remainder beneficiary (a regional university) on the initial funding, 2023. Thompson is admitted in Connecticut. He is a member of the CBA Estates and Probate Section's Education Committee and is on track for ACTEC membership consideration.