Robert T. Danforth
Smith Bain Manuel
455 Second Street, S.E., Suite 402
Post Office Box 240
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Email: rdanforth@smithbain.com
Phone: 434.293.1200
Mobile: 540.460.3213
Fax: 434.293.2135
Bob Danforth
Robert T. Danforth
Smith Bain Manuel
455 Second Street, S.E., Suite 402
Post Office Box 240
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Email: rdanforth@smithbain.com
Phone: 434.293.1200
Mobile: 540.460.3213
Fax: 434.293.2135
Robert T. Danforth
Smith Bain Manuel
455 Second Street, S.E., Suite 402
Post Office Box 240
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Email: rdanforth@smithbain.com
Phone: 434.293.1200
Mobile: 540.460.3213
Fax: 434.293.2135
Representative Experience
Bob serves as Of Counsel at Smith Bain Manuel, drawing on his nearly four decades of experience working with complex estate, trust, estate planning, and estate and trust taxation matters.
Bob spent his first year following law school clerking for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. After his clerkship, he joined a large law firm in Washington, D.C., and then in Virginia, where he focused his practice on estate planning and trust and estate administration. During this period, he also served as an adjunct member of the faculty at the University of Virginia, where for several years he taught a course on Estate Planning and Administration. After a total of ten years of private law practice, in 1997 Bob accepted a tenure-track job at Washington and Lee University School of Law, where for 27 years he taught courses and published books and articles relating to trusts and estates; estate planning; estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxation; and income taxation of trusts and estates. For the last seven years of his tenure at Washington and Lee, he held an endowed chair as the John Lucian Smith Jr. Memorial Professor of Law.
Practice Focus
Education
- Duke University School of Law, Durham, North Carolina, J.D., 1986
- Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, B.A., 1980
Bar Admissions
- Virginia, 1993
- D.C. (inactive), 1988
- North Carolina (inactive), 1987
Professional Associations and Memberships
- Fellow, American College of Trust and Estate Counsel
- Member, Council (2002-2005 and 2007-2010) and Legislative Committee (since 1998), Wills, Trusts, and Estates Section, Virginia Bar Association
Selected Publications
- Estate and Gift Taxation (Carolina Academic Press 4 th ed. 2024) (with Brant J. Hellwig)
- Federal Income Taxation of Estates and Trusts (Thomson Reuters 4 th ed. 2024) (with Howard M. Zaritsky and Norman H. Lane)
