Ned Spurgeon Passed Away on January 2, 2021

It is with profound sorrow that the Borchard Center on Law & Aging announces the death of Ned Spurgeon. spurgeon

Edward “Ned” Dutcher Spurgeon, 81, passed away in his Sacramento, California home on January 2. Son to Dr. Dorsett Spurgeon and Mary Dutcher Spurgeon, Ned was born in Newton, New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton and earned his JD from Stanford, where he met Carol Forbes, his wife of fifty-seven years. Ned later obtained his Master of Laws from NYU. While a partner at the Los Angeles based firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky, and Walker, Ned coauthored Federal Taxation of Trusts, Grantors, and Beneficiaries, a text and supplements remaining in use today.

From 1980 to 2010, Ned worked in academia. As an expert in tax law and later in elder law, he held positions as a tenured professor and Dean of two law schools, first at the University of Utah and then at the University of Georgia. He subsequently was the first holder of the Gordon D. Schaber Chair in Health Law and Policy at McGeorge Law School in Sacramento.

Ned was the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation Board President for thirty-seven years and founded the foundation’s Center on Law and Aging, which he directed until 2011. He and Carol also established public service fellowships at the University of Utah and University of Georgia. For Ned, philanthropic work and the teaching and mentoring of others were his highest professional callings. He served as Board President of the National Senior Citizens Law Center and as an advisor to the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging. He also co-founded the Utah Legal Services Senior Lawyer Volunteer Project and was a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (Utah Chapter). Ned received Justice and Aging’s inaugural Impact Award in 2014. In 2016, the American Bar Association’s Senior Lawyers Division honored him with the John H. Pickering Award of Achievement.

Ned loved spending time with his family and close personal friends and enjoyed travel, sports, piano, and his dogs. He cherished time at the beach in Ventura, California, the family’s longtime home away from home, where he treasured the early morning calm and trips to the donut shop, days spent sailing, model building, or socializing with neighbors, and evenings with cocktail hour conversations, the nightly news, and family dinners. Preceded in death by his parents and twin sister Mary Ann Lewis, Ned is survived by his sister Joan Brennan, his wife Carol, his sons Michael and Stephen, his daughters-in-law Elizabeth and Janie, his grandchildren Holden, Catherine, Hayden, and Samantha, and an extended family he held dear.

A memorial will be held at a later date.