Christina is a partner in our private client and tax team and works for the Los Angeles and Texas offices.
Christina focuses her practice on private client matters for high-net-worth individuals and families. Her practice encompasses all aspects of estate planning, wealth transfer planning, estate and trust administration, business succession planning, and charitable planning.
Christina's experience includes drafting complex wills and trust agreements. She routinely counsels clients on estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax issues and related federal and state income tax issues and has extensive experience in implementing sophisticated wealth transfer strategies, such as irrevocable life insurance trusts, dynasty trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, complete and incomplete gift trusts and the gift and sale of assets to intentionally defective grantor trusts.
While she advises clients with diverse sources of wealth, she has developed a particular focus on advising entrepreneurs and owners of closely-held businesses in pre-liquidity, pre-IPO, and pre-transaction estate planning.
She also represents trustees, executors, and beneficiaries in the administration of trusts and estates and has experience with complex trust administrations, large probates, and preparing and reviewing federal estate and gift tax returns.
Christina is dually licensed in California and Texas and an important part of her practice includes assisting clients with connections to both states and who are relocating from California to Texas and vice versa.
Prior to joining Withers, she worked as an associate at two law firms with nationally recognized wealth planning and tax practices. Christina is recognized as "One to Watch" by Best Lawyers in 2024, 2023, and 2022.
Recent recognition
Me in a minute
The most satisfying aspect of my job is acting as a trusted advisor for clients during their major life events.
I became interested in a career in estate planning after I worked for several years in the financial services industry in New York City after college. While I enjoyed the numerical analysis aspect of that career, I discovered that I ultimately wanted a career that focused on working with individual clients in a more personal setting, so I returned to law school with the goal of becoming an estate planning attorney.
Now, after several years in practice, I can say that this career allows me to serve individual clients and see a tangible impact that my work has on their lives.
As estate planners, we are often called on when a client is going through a major life event such as a marriage, illness or death, birth of a new child, divorce, investment in a new asset or sale of an existing business. The most satisfying aspect of my job is acting as a trusted advisor for clients during their major life events. I truly enjoy guiding clients through the legal aspects of these events to help them achieve their personal goals in the most tax efficient manner possible.