About
Christopher is a tax, trusts and succession lawyer, who specialises in family, estate and business strategic succession planning, and in ownership and occupation structures, particularly for private and charity owners of landed estates. His team acts for over fifty substantial landed estates throughout England and Wales. The team's land owning clients include individuals, charities, companies and trustees from the UK and internationally. Family succession, and complex matters arising from different and sophisticated structures, applied to a variety of different businesses and asset types, form the backbone of his practice.
Christopher is well known for his 'quietly spoken but authoritative demeanour' and 'plain speaking, effective' approach.
After leading the Landed Estates Team and the firm’s Cheltenham office for many years, Christopher was elected as Senior Partner of the firm in 2013, and led the firm until May 2021.
Christopher has returned happily to a full diary of client work (although he continues to have a (reduced) leadership role and continues to chair the CRS Foundation).
Christopher is admitted to practise in England and Wales.
Experience
- Arranging, for this and the following generation, the fair and happy division (as to ownership and use) of two large agricultural estates held by the same family for over 500 years, whilst safeguarding their longer term survival.
- Managing (as executor) an estate (land, grade 1 house, heritage contents), where there were no direct heirs, perpetuating their use for charitable purposes in tune with the last owners’ wishes.
- Overseeing the tax efficient sales of proportions of a Welsh estate, using the proceeds fairly for the benefit of the family, present and future, in part reinvested in land and in part invested for the ongoing maintenance of the historic main house.
