The People Part

In Elaine Bucher’s spare, orderly office, two equidistant chairs—angled symmetrically—face a desk that’s practically pristine. Four photos of her family are spaced evenly on a shelf behind the desk, and a recently acquired painting of a dancer—a gift—bears the words:

“And one day she discovered that she was fierce and strong and full of fire … and her passion burned brighter than her fears.”

Together, the pictures, the painting and the punctilious office reflect the vital elements of her private wealth services practice—a blend of heart, family and precise attention to detail.

“There’s no better practice,” says Bucher, a shareholder and member of Gunster’s board of directors. “It has the intellectual challenge, the tax part of it, that piece of it. Trying to decipher the Internal Revenue Code, I mean, that’s not sexy or exciting, but it’s intellectually challenging.”

But sophisticated estate and trust planning for high-net-worth clients, in the $50 million and up range, takes more than knowing the tax code. That other part, Bucher says, is what she loves most about her niche.

“You need that IQ piece, but you need the EQ—the people part of it,” she explains. “That is something I think that can’t necessarily be taught. But if you are a people person, if you’re interested in people’s stories and really getting to know them, getting to know their families, and figuring out a way that you can really, really help them in delicate, sensitive family situations, there’s nothing better.”

Just ask Carly Asher Yoost. With the unexpected death of her father, a successful entrepreneur who built a multimillion-dollar software company called TLO, his estate was complicated, with many stakeholders. 

“Everything was moving very quick,” Yoost says, “and the possibility of losing the company, losing our financial stake in the company, was all a real reality.”

To them, it wasn’t just a company. It was Hank Asher’s legacy. He was a legend in data-mining circles, a pioneer who developed programs capable of ferreting out arcane connections in far-flung data fields, for better or for worse supplying information to everyone from credit reporting companies and insurers to law enforcement agencies. The program the family cared about most helped police track the spread of child pornography on the internet and catch predators across the globe.

So they contacted Bucher, who put them in touch with a bankruptcy attorney and helped with all the estate matters that came up as the company went through a Chapter 11 restructuring and, ultimately, a 23-hour-long bankruptcy auction. The sisters and interested buyers huddled in Gunster’s Miami office with Bucher shuttling back and forth to discuss the offers. “The highest isn’t always the best, right?” says Bucher.

Eventually, they succeeded in selling the company to TransUnion for $154 million, with the stipulation that the new owners would license the software tracking child sex-abuse material to a family-run nonprofit that Bucher helped establish—the Child Rescue Coalition.

“It was kind of terrifying at the moment, doing it ourselves and putting more on the line and putting ourselves out there,” says Yoost, explaining that they had offers from investors but Bucher encouraged them to fund the company themselves. “It really was the best decision, the only decision, and a big part of it was her believing in us and believing that was the right move to do.”

A decade later, CRC continues to offer the technology free to law enforcement. Yoost adds proudly, “We’ve trained now in 102 countries. It’s being used in all 50 states and has led to the arrest of over 15,000 child predators.”

Bucher remains actively involved, and continues to provide pro bono legal services.

“We ended up considering her a very dear friend. She was just there for us the whole time—both professionally and cheering us on,” Yoost says. “Even after we sold, she continued giving us the belief in my being able to start my own nonprofit, being so encouraging of that and showing up to our events and being a real friend.”

Wealth adviser Alyssa Zebrowsky, a managing director at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, says, “She is very good at listening to people’s softer concerns about family dynamics and legacy. It’s rarer than you would imagine.”

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The interpersonal component is what attracted Bucher to estate planning in the first place.

She started off as a dual major in psychology and political science at Washington University in St. Louis and was leaning toward psychology. When professors suggested she try law, she took the advice, heading to University of Pennsylvania Law School with dreams of becoming a litigator. After a summer at the district attorney’s office in Philadelphia, she decided on civil litigation.

There were no lawyers in her family. Her mother was a tutor for students with learning disabilities; her father an organic chemist with Procter & Gamble, a holder of several patents. Among them, Bucher says with obvious pride, was the first for two-in-one shampoo and conditioner.

Growing up in Cincinnati, she says, “I thought he was a magician with all the dry ice. I was the test baby for all sorts of crazy things.”

After graduation, she joined the offices of Saul Ewing as an associate, still thinking she would be a litigator. On day one, however, they said they needed help in estate and trusts.

“You say yes, because what else are you going to say? Even though I had no background and no tax classes whatsoever.”

She found herself among men who were “old-time counselors, really soft-spoken, genteel, wonderful people.” They cared about their clients, and about her. They took the time to explain and to mentor her. “I fell in love with it: the stories, the people, the intricacies,” she recalls.

She went back to her bosses and asked, “Can I do this full time?” She then filled in the gaps in her education—auditing classes at night, learning everything she could about state and gift tax, fiduciary income tax. Listening attentively to paralegals explain how to file a probate document, prepare an estate tax return. And reading: “Everything I could get my hands on.”

One problem? She couldn’t stand Philadelphia’s winters. Newly married, she begged her husband, fellow attorney Andrew Bucher, to move as far from the cold as possible. Finally, as winter came to an end—most notably, after Super Bowl weekend (see sidebar)—he agreed. If he passed the Florida Bar.

He did. That was in 1998.

She went to work at Stuart Morris Associates in Boca Raton, which soon became Morris & Pratt. “It was a lean firm,” she says. “I was thrown into doing a lot of work that was sophisticated—[work I] would not have had a chance to do at a much larger firm.”

When the firm split, she went with David Pratt. Fewer than five years after arriving in Florida, he put her name next to his at what became Pratt & Bucher.

In 2005, they both joined Proskauer Rose. She made her mark quickly, establishing the firm’s pro bono estate planning initiative for parents of kids with special needs, many of whom would need lifelong care.

“My nephew is severely autistic,” she says. “And I just saw what his parents, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, were going through. … They were telling me so many people need help. They couldn’t afford a high-priced attorney, and quite honestly were just spending all their money on their kids and their therapies and all of it.”

In just one year, the short-term program helped 30 families.

Barely three years later, Bucher took on an adoption case involving a millionaire convicted of killing a 23-year-old college student while drunk driving.

After the victim’s parents filed a civil suit, the millionaire—Wellington polo club magnate John Goodman—adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend.

Goodman was divorced with children from a previous marriage. Adopting his girlfriend made her his “child,” entitled to an equal share of an existing trust for his biological children, including an immediate payout of $5 million.

They kept the proceedings quiet until after a court approved it and the period to appeal expired.

When Goodman’s ex-wife found out, she brought in Bucher. The case went all the way to appeals. Then, stating that Goodman’s “deliberate failure to provide notice … constituted a fraud,” an appellate court sided with the ex. It nullified the adoption.  

“I think a hundred percent the right answer, the right conclusion, was reached,” Bucher says.

In 2012, she moved on to Gunster as a shareholder. Again, she made her mark quickly. Bucher and a colleague helped the firm start an official firm mentorship program, which continues to this day. 

“If you’re really getting mentored, somebody is invested in you and invested in your training, invested in your growth, invested in your success,” she says. “And if that’s the case, one, the mentee is much less willing to leave. And two, selfishly, you have a transition plan. And that benefits everyone. It benefits the clients as well.”

The following year, Bucher made another mark. She became the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel’s first female chair for Florida.

She’s also taken leadership roles in a variety of community organizations: The Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hillel of Broward and Palm Beach, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Southeast Florida Division. Her choices were based on a single, simple criterion: “If I’m going to spend my time doing it, I want it to really mean something.”

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She applies the same principle to her work, guiding families through what can be difficult discussions about prenuptial or postnuptial agreements, estate plan provisions for children from prior marriages and children yet to come, or complex multigenerational business successions.

“The piece that I really do, it’s more about counseling the client on how to best structure their plan in a way that makes sense for them and for their families,” she says. “Each generational level, more and more people get involved and their spouses get involved. What do you do there?”

It often comes down to something Bucher picked up as a test baby: watching her father overcome obstacles with innovation and inspiration.

There was the time two sisters locked horns over a pair of emerald and diamond earrings their mother left behind. Each insisted she was the rightful recipient. Bucher’s solution was Solomonic in its simplicity. She suggested the sisters turn them into a pair of matching pendants, using one earring each. Problem solved. “I’m going to figure out a way to make it happen,” she says. “What estate planning techniques can we take advantage of to make this work? And I think I’m really creative—without pressing boundaries—but really, really creative in what we do so that we come up with a solution that really makes the clients happy.”

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Game Time

Elaine Bucher’s father called it right after she and her future husband met.

“My dad turned to my mom and said, ‘They’re going to get married. She’s finally interested in football.’”

They met in the Penn Law library. They talked for hours. But he had another date looming: He was headed to California to watch Penn State play in the Rose Bowl. Suddenly, as her dad noticed, she wanted to watch, too.

Today, more than a quarter century later and with their two sons scattered, in England and L.A., football is a family affair. Only now they do it by text.

And, in case you’re wondering, her husband, civil court mediator Andrew Bucher, is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan. Which pretty much means so is everyone else in the family.