Schenck Price
Attorney
Shirley B. Whitenack co-chairs Schenck Price's Elder and Special Needs Law Practice Group and the Estates and Trusts Litigation Practice Group. She devotes a substantial portion of her practice to elder and special needs law, estate planning and administration, and trust and estate litigation. She is also on the State of New Jersey roster of approved mediators.
Shirley is a Past President of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), a NAELA Fellow, and a member of NAELA's Council of Advanced Practitioners (CAP), an invitation-only group of elder and special needs planning practitioners, and has served as an adjunct professor of law in the J.D. and LL.M. in Elder Law Programs at Stetson University College of Law.
Shirley is a member of the Special Needs Alliance (SNA), an invitation-only nationwide alliance of special needs planning attorneys.
Shirley publishes and lectures extensively on topics related to guardianship, elder and special needs law, estate and trust litigation and probate mediation. She is quoted in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Market Watch, Kiplinger's, and Personal Financial Magazine, Money and Consumer Reports.
Shirley received the NJSBA's Legislative Service Award in 2003 for her contribution in drafting and promoting revisions to New Jersey's guardianship statutes and the NJSBA's Amicus Curiae Award in 2004. She received GANJI's Recognition Award in 2003 for her contribution in advocating for the civil rights of incapacitated individuals.
She received NJICLE's Distinguished Service Award in 2007 and the Distinguished Service Award from the NJSBA's Elder & Section in 2009. Shirley received the Community Health Law Project's Ann Klein Advocate Award in 2011 for improving the lives of people with disabilities and was recognized in 2011 by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey in a Joint Resolution for service to those with special needs. In 2012, she was honored by the NJSBA for her long service as a trustee of the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education and received the NJSBA's Distinguished Legislative Service Award for her contribution to New Jersey's enactment of the Uniform Adult Guardianship and Protective
Jurisdiction Act. Shirley received the Morris County Bar Association's Civil Practice Award in 2015 and is the recipient of the 2017 Alfred C. Clapp Award for Excellence in Legal Education by the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education. In 2019, she was selected by the New Jersey Bar Foundation as a recipient of the prestigious Medal of Honor.
She is AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell and has been included on the New Jersey's Top 100 Super Lawyers list, New Jersey's Top 50 Women Super Lawyers list and the Elder Law Super Lawyer list,* published by Thomson Reuters. She also has been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America * list for Trusts and Estates.