About Mark

Mark S. Balian is an Administrative Partner with the firm sharing administration and firm management duties with Managing Partner, Stuart Liebman. Mark is Chair of the firm’s Tax, Trusts, and Estates Department and Business and Transactional Department. His focus is in the fields of estate planning, estate administration, elder planning and Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts, and estate litigation as well as business and commercial tax planning, litigation and transactions of commercial real estate, leases, acquisitions, mergers, dissolutions, and private business compliance and guidance. His sophisticated and diverse experience working with business and families and educational background enables Mark to assist his clients in multiple often interrelated areas of law while servicing with the care and attention to detail that they deserve.

Mark has negotiated and closed numerous complex business transactions and served as counsel to mid-sized businesses and public corporations in various industries and professions, often working with in-house counsel. His practice also includes succession planning for businesses, conservatorships and guardianships, and the representation of Executors, beneficiaries, corporations and business partners in litigation matters.

Mark’s experience prior to Wells, Jaworski & Liebman, LLP includes employment with a Bergen County law firm practicing in the areas of tax, trusts, and estates and business and commercial Law. In addition, he worked for a Bergen County forensic accounting firm engaged in forensic and legal investigative casework in the areas of estate and gift tax, shareholder dissent and oppression, divorce, and damage claims assisting in the mediation of high net worth divorce cases and master of discovery roles, trust accountings, valuation of private practices, lifestyle analyses, gift tax valuations, and operating and trust agreement analyses. Mr. Balian also served as law clerk to The Honorable Susan Peikes Gantman of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Mark is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ridgewood YMCA, also serving on the Finance Subcommittee. Mark is a member of the Greater New Jersey Estate Planning Council, the Hudson-Bergen Inn of Transactional Counsel, Bergen County Bar Association, the 200 Club of Bergen County, an organization which supports local public servicemen and women, and a supporter of the Newark Fraternal Order of Police.

Mark is a cum laude graduate of Villanova University, receiving a Bachelor of Science in accounting with a concentration in the honors program in 2004. He graduated from the Villanova University School of Law and School of Business in 2007, receiving both his Juris Doctor and Master in Business Administration. After law school, Mr. Balian received his LL.M. (legal master’s degree) in taxation from Villanova Law in addition to a certificate in estate planning. He is licensed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Mark has litigated matters at the New Jersey Supreme Court and the Appellate Division level.

Mark is a Bergen County resident along with his wife, Adriana, and their three children Mark, Viviana, and Damian.