The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
The Republican candidate for Township Mayor has denounced as a “smear campaign” and a “mountain out of a molehill” the revelation by Somerset County Democrats that he had been removed as executor of a deceased client’s estate and ordered to repay the estate more than $200,000 in 2021 amid allegations of charging the estate excessive fees.
County Democrats released the information on October 29, slightly more than a week before the General Election.
The candidate, former Mayor and County Commissioner Brian Levine, is challenging incumbent Mayor Phil Kramer, a Democrat.
Although he was ordered to pay more than $224,000 – which included more than $195,000 in accounting fees his firm charged to the estate of Harry Brown, with the rest being the fees of the Brown’s heirs’ lawyer and a forensic accountant – Levine negotiated a settlement and eventually paid $175,000 in the Spring of 2022, according to the heirs’ attorney, Craig Weinstein.
“My client didn’t want to deal with Brian anymore,” Weinstein said.
Levine tells a different story.
“I agreed to let the daughter handle the estate because of how she was responding,” he said in an email. “Technically it was a court order, but I had enough at that point and wanted out.”
The saga started in November 2014 after the death of Harry Darrow Brown, a New Brunswick resident who, before his 1999 retirement, was a biochemistry professor and Dean of Research at Rutgers University’s Cook College.
Levine was named Executor of the estate in February 2015, Weinstein said.
An Executor’s duties generally are to settle the affairs of the estate and to make any necessary disbursements of money to heirs.
Weinstein said he was approached by one of Brown’s daughters, Laaren Brown Hort, in February of 2019 because, he said, Levine had not yet dispersed any of the estate to Brown’s heirs, who were Hort and her two sisters, over the preceding four years.
During that time, however, Levine’s accounting business had charged the estate $195,402.51 in fees, according to Surrogate Court papers reviewed by the Franklin Reporter & Advocate.
“He billed 195,000 and no one ever saw a penny,” Weinstein said, referring to the heirs.
Weinstein said he filed suit against Levine in 2019 “because no distributions had been made to the beneficiaries in four years. It was a complaint and order to show cause, asking that Brian provide a full accounting of the estate, so we knew what the numbers were, and for him to be removed” as Executor.
“The judge gave Brian every opportunity to provide the accounting,” Weinstein said. “It dragged on for a while and eventually Brian was removed as executor.”
Court papers show that Levine was not immediately removed as the estate’s Executor, but was ordered to disburse the estate funds and provide a full accounting.
When no disbursements were made after several months, the heirs returned to court, and in November 2019, Levine was removed as Executor.
Levine challenged the orders removing him as Executor and requiring the repayment, but he was denied in February, 2020.
The order for Levine to repay the $195,000, plus lawyer and forensic accountant fees, was made on March 26, 2021, by Judge Roger Daley, according to court papers.
The court papers show that the order was unopposed.
In his legal argument asking that the fees Levine charged be returned to the estate, Weinstein wrote that rather than ensure the estate’s matters were handled efficiently, Levine “acted in his own best interest and the interest of his accounting firm.”
The $195,402.51 that Levine paid his firm from Brown’s personal checking account and the estate’s checking account was a “staggering amount given the simplicity and size of the estate which consisted of Mr. Brown’s personal residence and financial accounts,” Brown wrote in the papers.
“Mr. Levine breached the trust placed in him as Executor and is not entitled to any fees paid to him by the estate,” he wrote.
Weinstein then outlined what he said were 10 instances of Levine’s breaching of that trust, including charging an hourly rate for accounting services rather than take the standard Executor’s commission; raising that hourly rate from $235 per hour when Brown was alive to $325 per hour after his death, although Levine said all transactions were approved by Brown and his wife while they were alive; billing Brown’s estate for work he did for his wife’s estate after she died in 2009, even though one of her daughters was the Executrix, and failing to file estate tax returns from 2014 through 2018.
Levine “lost every step of the way,” Weinstein said. “At every stage, he had more than one lawyer, he just made this into a circus. And he never prevailed on one thing.”
That’s not how Levine remembers things.
“The lawsuit was filed by daughters of Harry Brown, who did not participate in his care while he was alive, nor handle his affairs after he died,” he wrote. “He personally chose me to handle everything, not any of his relatives. They tried to sue me several times over the years, both before and after his passing, and the suits were always thrown out until I handed the estate back to them.”
Weinstein said Levine could have easily remained as Executor.
“If he had provided an accounting that was acceptable to the court, he would have remained as Executor,” he said. “If he had explained the delay, we would have lost and he would have remained as Executor.”
“They gave him every opportunity to stay on,” he said.
In his statement, Levine said that “the only reason there was a judgment was that my insurance company missed the response date, so I had to negotiate a settlement at the time, which was far less. I currently have an action against the insurance company for improper representation.”
“I left the estate, through prudent work, with a larger balance than it started,” he said.
“That is an untrue statement,” Weinstein said.
Levine said he served as more than just an accountant when Brown was still alive.
“When Professor Harry Brown was alive, I took him to doctors’ appointments, visited almost weekly, consulted with his care-givers, and was his confidant,” he wrote. “His daughter did none of this. It is typical family dynamics for Professor Brown.”
County Democrats, Levine wrote, “are making a mountain out of a molehill; trying to use a worthless diversion and a mudslinging tactic.”
“It is disheartening and insulting to our community to see the Democrats resorting to baseless attacks and smear tactics in their campaign against me,” he wrote. “It is essential to set the record straight on my record of strong leadership and fiscal responsibility so the residents of Franklin can make an informed choice and not be influenced by desperate attempts at divisive party politics that we don’t need or want here in Franklin.”
“We used to have such positive campaigns,” Levine wrote. “Now that they are afraid, they are sinking low. Too bad.”
In a press release on the revelations, Somerset County Democratic Chairwoman Peg Shaffer said, “Brian Levine has violated his fiduciary duty as an executor and accountant to safeguard the funds of an estate with which he was entrusted,” stated Somerset County Chairwoman Peg Shaffer. “this transgression calls into question his ability to safeguard Township finances and disqualifies him from holding public office. He should withdraw his candidacy immediately.”
