Christopher D. Deitrich

By the time a family reaches this practice, the hard part is usually behind them. A company was started and made to work. A property was bought when it was a risk. Children were raised, educated, and sent out to build things of their own. What arrives here is the result of decades of effort, and the question is no longer whether it can be done. It is what it should now be made to do.

He has been admitted in California since 2012, and holds both a law degree and an M.B.A. from Chapman. In 2016 he was admitted as an Enrolled Agent, which authorizes direct representation of taxpayers before the IRS. The practical effect is that the person who takes a valuation position in your plan is the same person who would sit across from the examiner and defend it.

The business degree earns its keep with operating families. When a company is the estate, the valuation question, the cash flow question, the control question and the tax question all have to resolve at the same time, and they pull against each other. Reading the financials is part of the job.

Much of the work from there is about direction rather than defense. A company can be positioned to outlast its founder and keep paying the people who depend on it. Holdings can be arranged so that a grandchild's education is already handled. A foundation, a scholarship, a gift to a hospital or a school can be built to run long after the family stops writing the checks personally. These are the decisions that turn a balance sheet into something a family is proud of, and they take time to get right.

Chris works with each family directly, through the first conversation, the signing, and every review after it. The measure of the work is not the document. It is whether a client can look at what they built and feel settled about where it is going.