Chris joined the firm in 2015 and is a partner in the Firm’s Estate Planning, Corporate Law and Real Property practice groups. Chris leverages his experience in these integrated practice areas to provide creative and efficient solutions to ensure clients’ wishes are carried out both now and in the future.
Chris’s primary areas of practice include:
- Estate planning, both foundational planning (including living trusts, pour-over wills, and other fundamental documents), and advanced techniques aimed at reducing tax exposure while satisfying each client’s unique planning objectives, such as lifetime gifting programs, dynasty trusts, Crummey trusts for minors, irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILIT), spousal lifetime access trusts (SLAT), non-grantor trusts for qualified small business stock “stacking” purposes or to hold incomplete gift (ING) assets, and other advanced techniques.
- Trust and probate administration, including ancillary matters such as trustee accountings and Heggstad petitions to transfer property into trust ex post facto.
- Structuring and organizing limited liability companies and partnerships, with an emphasis on real estate holding entities and family businesses.
- Advising new and developing companies through private placement offerings.
- Advising buyers and sellers through all phases of real estate transactions, including acquisitions, sales and leases.
- Like-kind exchanges under Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code.
- Marital asset protection planning, including premarital and postmarital agreements.
Prior to joining the Firm, Chris served as a judicial extern for the California Supreme Court under Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Chris received his Juris Doctorate from U.C. Hastings (now UC College of the Law San Francisco) in 2015, where he graduated magna cum laude. While at Hastings, Chris received the prestigious Witkin Award for Academic Excellence five times by achieving the top grade in his courses. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, with Minor Degrees in History and Biology, from U.C. San Diego, graduating cum laude.
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