Ruth Schapiro

NY Times Obituary:

Ruth G. Schapiro, 64, Leading Tax Lawyer

Ruth G. Schapiro, a nationally known tax lawyer and a partner in the New York firm of Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 64 years old.

Donald Schapiro, her husband of 39 years, said she died of cancer.

Mrs. Schapiro, a native of Manhattan, was a 1947 graduate of Wellesley College and received a law degree from Columbia Law School, where she was notes editor of the Law Review. She went to work in 1951 at the firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and joined the Proskauer firm in 1955.

President Carter appointed Mrs. Schapiro to the Tax Court Nominating Commission in 1978, and she served as a member of the panel until 1981. At the time of her death, she was chairwoman of the committee on personal income taxes of the New York City State Bar Association.

She was a past chairwoman of the state bar's tax section, as well as of its finance committee, and served on the executive committee of the state bar's House of Delegates. From 1984 to 1989, she also headed a special committee on women in the courts set up by the state bar.

Besides her husband, Mrs. Schapiro's survivors include a daughter, Jane G., also of Manhattan; a son, Robert A., of Columbia, Md., and a sister, Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of United States District Court in Manhattan.