New Law to Curb Will-Drafting Abuses : Estates: Lawyers are restricted in giving themselves gifts when writing wills and trusts. Change is made after reports of an attorney who netted millions of dollars.

Hoping to protect elderly retirees in the drafting of wills, Gov. Pete Wilson has signed into law a measure by an Orange County legislator that restricts lawyers from making themselves beneficiaries of their clients’ estates.

The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, stems from the activities of an Orange County lawyer who netted millions of dollars from elderly Leisure World retirees by having himself named in their wills or trusts.

“It is an outrage that there are attorneys in California who would take advantage of the people whose rights they are supposed to protect,” Wilson said. “This law gives the state sufficient ammunition against these legal vultures who are preying on the vulnerable members of our society.”

Signed by Wilson over the weekend, the new law was authored by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove).

The measure invalidates, with some exceptions, bequests to attorneys who prepared or arranged wills or trusts that gave them gifts.

Umberg and the others began pushing the legislation after The Times revealed that Laguna Hills lawyer James D. Gunderson, 68, made himself a major beneficiary of many of his clients’ estates.

In one case, Gunderson arranged for a blind and bedridden 98-year-old Leisure World man to sign a will and a trust that together bequeathed the attorney $3.5 million and made the other beneficiaries liable for an estimated $2 million in inheritance taxes he normally would have incurred.

Gunderson, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, received the inheritance despite a longstanding California Supreme Court ruling that anything more than a modest gift to an attorney from a client’s estate raises questions of impropriety.

With Wilson’s signing, California joins 38 other states in forbidding lawyers from writing wills giving them part of an estate.

Harvey Saferstein, State Bar of California president, said he was pleased the governor had signed the bill.

Although the State Bar supported the legislative effort, Saferstein said, “a lot of lawyers felt the bill was unfair, that they were being penalized because of a few bad apples.”

As a practical consideration, the law will prohibit all attorneys from accepting any sort of gift from the estate of a client, even one of long standing who might want to reward a beloved legal adviser whom they consider a friend, Saferstein said.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully Seymour suggested that the new law, while an improvement, will not guarantee that attorneys cannot take advantage of elderly clients. To escape its provisions, unscrupulous lawyers would only have to find outside attorneys to write wills giving them large sums, he said.