Professor Emeritus Guy B. Maxfield passed away on Wednesday, August 19. He served on the NYU Law faculty for 43 years and had a national reputation in the field of income taxation and estate and gift taxation.
In an email to the NYU Law community, Dean Trevor Morrison shared reflections on Maxfield, including comments from Professor Steven Dean, faculty director of the Graduate Tax Program, who calls Maxfield “one of the titans of both federal income taxation and federal estate and gift taxation with a legacy that lives on in the countless NYU Law Graduate Tax Program students he inspired.”
Morrison’s note also shared comments from Professor Noël Cunningham, one of Maxfield’s students as well as a faculty colleague, who recalls that Maxfield was “hired by the legendary Gerald Wallace and formed a key part of the program that helped make NYU Law the powerhouse it has become.”
Among his many career accomplishments, Maxfield co-authored Federal Estate and Gift Taxation in 1967, the landmark treatise in the area; consulted for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the United States Treasury Department; and taught estate and gift taxation courses for attorneys at the National Office of the Internal Revenue Service.
Maxfield earned his JD at the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and was editor of the Michigan Law Review. He received his BA from Augustana College. In 1958, he entered law practice as an associate in the tax department of White & Case and was there for several years before joining NYU Law.
Posted August 25, 2020