Destiny Calls for Estate Lawyer Alina Nuñez

“Adapt yourself to you the things among which your lot has been cast,” Marcus Aurelius wrote, “and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.”

This is sage advice. Destiny can be a persistent and at times confounding companion on our life’s journey—but those who embrace it with intentional love and conscientiousness can accrue awe-inspiring benefits not only for themselves but others.

Take Alina Nuñez. For more than two decades, the local real estate, estate planning, and probate attorney has guided thousands of clients through both the most beautiful and most challenging moments in their lives with a level of skill, insight, and compassion that is extraordinary if not outright peerless. 

And yet, despite the persistent nudges, practicing law was not her first choice for a career. 

“I know there are some people who say, ‘I knew since I was a child the law was my passion, and I watched all the movies and TV shows about law, and a lawyer is all I ever wanted to be,’” Nuñez tells AQUA Miami with a chuckle. “That definitely was not me.”

So how then, precisely, did Nuñez end up leading a team of lawyers, paralegals, and administrators at Nuñez Estate Law & Title to expertly guide ordinary, everyday citizens through wills, trusts, and advance directives as well as probate administrations, residential and commercial closings, contracts, title reviews, and more? 

Nuñez recently shared her journey with us and provided some valuable tips for how our readers can economically and emotionally protect their families and plan for peace of mind in turbulent times. 

Beginnings

“This isn’t like Law & Order at all…” Nuñez thought to herself.

She was a sophomore in high school. A coworker of hers at the luxury bath and body store Crabtree & Evelyn interning at the public defender’s officer had invited Nuñez to visit the courthouse with her.  Her interest was piqued, and the idea of becoming a criminal law attorney captured her imagination…but the shackled defendants making lewd comments amidst the brutal, dreary, and tedious routine of criminal justice quickly un-piqued it. “Oh, no, this is not for me,” Nuñez thought. 

Instead, Nuñez chose to pursue her love for theater and dance as an actress. “Of course, my parents both nearly had heart attacks,” the first-generation Cuban American laughs. “Their daughter went from wanting to be an attorney to wanting to be an actress.” 

And though she understood the concern then on some level, she understands it even more now: Her father had escaped Cuba alone as a stowaway on a Russian cargo ship with no idea where he would end up—an only son placed there by his mother after other close family had been put in front of the dictatorship’s firing squads. He landed in Nova Scotia and eventually made his way down to Miami where he met Nuñez’ mother, who also left Cuba with her two younger sisters after her mother died, and he worked as an airline mechanic at Eastern Airlines for decades. 

“My parents sacrificed everything to give my brother and I, their future children, a better life and a winning chance,” she says. “That has to be honored. I tell my children now: ‘Every generation needs to move the link forward.’” 

And, so, despite an acceptance to the prestigious Tisch School of the Performing Arts at New York University, Nuñez obeyed her parents and kept searching for a more stable slice of the American dream. Her cousin, a paralegal, mentioned a position at her firm had just opened up. “My mother drove me to the interview,” Nuñez laughs. “I think she was worried I’d back out.” She got the gig and excelled in climbing the ranks from covering reception and gopher work to doing clerk work. When two partners left to open their own firm, they took a 21-year-old Nuñez along as an office manager. 

Nuñez still loved acting. She had auditioned for some commercials; performed in several plays, but no matter how much she resisted, all trails continued to lead back to law. Case in point: In the pre-internet days, she flipped through one of those books on discovering your perfect career and law kept coming up. “I said, ‘Okay, fine. I give in Universe. I’ll go to law school.’”

By day, Nuñez worked at the firm. Nights she attended Florida International University. Once she earned her bachelor’s degree, she did the same thing for law school at Nova Southeastern University in Broward. Weekends were a blur of studying. She had a good role model in this: her mother had also balanced her day job and raising children with night school to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education so she could teach—graduating at age 45 in the same month her son graduated from high school. 

“My parents taught me what it’s like to hustle and work hard to achieve your dreams,” says Nuñez, who persevered and got her law degree, eventually sliding into transactional law focused on real estate and title. “I call it practicing happy law,” Nuñez says. “It made me proud, especially coming from an immigrant family, to sit at a closing table with a family who came here from another country and was now purchasing a home—their first part of the American dream. Sometimes when handing them those keys, they would literally cry tears of joy. It was very fulfilling.”

Rising Up

Nuñez continued in this lane for many years…until the 2007 market crash. “My career crashed with the market,” she says. The firm she was at essentially dissolved, but, ever the adapter, Nunez shifted to foreclosure defense. She found herself litigating in court daily. “It’s funny because sometimes during all those years of transactional work in an office I would say to my husband, ‘I don’t feel like a real attorney—I never go to court,’” Nuñez says. “Well, be careful what you wish for, because I got a lot of time in court. For five years, it was insane.” Not that she didn’t enjoy it. “I guess the acting side of me finally had a chance to come out,” she says, “putting on my case with a judge for an audience.” She even moonlighted as the real estate/foreclosure attorney on a live call-in television show from 11 p.m. to midnight for two years. 

In 2014, Nuñez fulfilled a lifetime dream of opening her own private practice. “It was a scary leap to make,” she acknowledges. “If it weren’t for the market crash, I probably would’ve done it a little sooner. But I knew it was time because—especially as a woman and mother—I wanted the flexibility to be the homeroom mom to my kids, to chaperone field trips, to just generally be there for the younger years because you can never get that time back.” That doesn’t mean it was easy. There was a lot of juggling, but she worked to have the flexibility to be with her mom through her mom’s three-year cancer journey. And then, a mere forty-five days after her mother passed, Nuñez herself received a breast cancer diagnosis and went through her own treatment.

“I couldn’t have dealt with any of that without the support of my husband, family, and amazing team,” Nuñez says. “They kept the firm running for me during times of need. Yes, it’s my name on the door, but I do not do this alone. We’ve grown to a team of 12—and I cannot do this without every single one of them.” In 2024, her husband Walter joined the firm as CFO. “We always knew that one day he would be part of the firm, and our decision to make that transition was exactly what we needed. We met 26 years ago working at the same law firm, so why not do it again?” says Nuñez.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

When Nuñez launched her own firm, she promised herself she would never put all her legal eggs in one practice area basket. 

The seeds of another line of business had already been planted: When her grandmother passed away from Alzheimer’s, Nuñez was already an attorney—though just barely. “My dad said, ‘Hey, I need you to help me figure this out,’” she recalls. “Well…I graduated law school, like, five minutes ago, but okay!” Because her grandmother didn’t have a will, Nuñez got a first-hand view of the complexity and expense of the probate process. It’s something she was familiar with from real estate law: Homes are typically the biggest asset people have. But the personal cost of lack of planning proved eye-opening. Later, when her father developed Alzheimer’s and needed resources for treatment and a caretaker, he and Nuñez had done all the planning, and everything went as smoothly as possible for his beloved wife. 

This is, in broad strokes, how the estate planning segment of Nuñez’ firm was born. “Nobody wants to talk about illness, no one wants to talk about death,” Nunez says. “Understandably. It’s not fun. But guess what? It’s a reality. And, as I tell clients at the outset, it’s not like the Grim Reaper is going to walk through the door if you start talking about your estate. I promise you.” 

Nuñez is on a mission to show people estate planning, contrary to all-too-popular opinion, is not the sole provenance of Rockefellers, Kennedys, and trust fund babies. “People don’t think they have an estate,” she says. “But if you own a house or a car or jewelry or any personal belongings or have a bank account—you have an estate.” And if how you want those assets distributed isn’t delineated in writing, it will be done in court based on the law, not your express wishes. “If people think estate planning is expensive, wait until the court and attorneys get involved,” Nuñez says. “It has a cost, but what value do you place on peace of mind? Or on saving your children from the stress and expense of a couple years of probate court?” 

A Bright Future

Bolstered by word of mouth and referrals, Nuñez Estate Law & Title has grown exponentially over the last few years. The goal, however, is never mere revenue. “For us, it’s always also, ‘How many more families can we be there for? How many more people can we help?’” Nuñez says. “Whether it’s a home closing or an estate plan, I want to empower people to build and protect legacies. 

“I didn’t start out wanting to be an attorney,” she adds. “But I am very glad that God led me onto this path. I really do love and enjoy what I do.” 

For more information, visit willsattorneymiami.com.