Chris is a corporate & securities and private wealth lawyer, focusing his practice in the areas of generational wealth transfer planning, trust and estate administration and tax-exempt planning.
Chris provides clients with customized planning advice to assist with the generational transfer of wealth during lifetime and at death. His previous legal experience in a corporate transactional practice enables him to more effectively serve business owners and the challenges they face in transitioning assets to successive generations. Chris also assists clients in the creation of family limited liability companies to own and manage family assets. Additionally, he advises individual and corporate trustees on judicial and non-judicial modifications and decanting of irrevocable trust agreements when existing trust language has become impractical.
Chris also advises clients on the creation of tax-exempt entities and the subsequent administration of those entities. Chris advises existing tax-exempt clients on various issues, including their charitable solicitation license compliance programs.
Chris actively speaks on legal development and trends within the trusts and estates practice.
Representative Experience
Any result the lawyer or law firm may have achieved on behalf of clients in other matters does not necessarily indicate similar results can be obtained for other clients.
- Represented an estate beneficiary in negotiating transfer of property inherited jointly with another beneficiary and navigating a partition action.
- Advised a tax-exempt entity during a conversion from a supporting organization to a private foundation and continued to advise the foundation on subsequent legal issues.
- Assisted a university in judicial and nonjudicial modifications of endowment funds to allow the commingling of funds under the North Carolina Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act.
- Represented a large tax-exempt organization with its national charitable solicitation license compliance program to enable it to implement national fundraising campaigns.
- Assisted parents with the guardian appointment process for a minor child with disabilities who was attaining the age of majority to ensure the parents would maintain authority over financial and health care decisions for their child.
Professional & Civic Engagement
- Director and President, Estate Planning Council of Winston-Salem
- Director, SECU Family House in Winston-Salem
- Member, Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Section of the North Carolina Bar Association
Honors and Awards
- Recognized in The Best Lawyers in America (BL Rankings), Trusts and Estates, 2016 – Present
- Recognized in North Carolina Super Lawyers – Rising Stars (Thompson Reuters) (2023)
