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Stefan C. Nicholas, Attorney

COLUMN = LAW

Stefan C. Nicholas is a director and chair of Jackson & Campbell’s Estates and Trusts practice group and a member of the Business Law practice group. He has extensive experience in drafting wills, trusts, and all ancillary documents in connection with estate and gift-tax planning, as well as asset-protection planning, including both on- and off-shore asset-protection trusts and the use of corporate entities. Stefan also has extensive experience with sophisticated wealth transfer techniques such as grantor retained interest trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and defective grantor trusts.

In addition, Stefan specializes in developing exit-planning strategies for business owners, and has counseled clients on estate planning, business succession planning, and asset-protection planning with an emphasis on managing the tax impact that liquidity events have on a client’s personal assets. He has guided clients on completing mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, and has negotiated partnership, management, shareholder, employment, and confidentiality agreements on behalf of numerous clients.

Stefan earned his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a member of the Moore Society of International Law and the Black Law Students Association. Before that, Stefan earned his master’s in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia Wilson School of Foreign Affairs. He received a BA in International Relations from Georgetown University, which he followed with academic stints in Prague in the Czech Republic and Berlin, Germany, where he earned a Certificate of German Language and Culture from the Goethe Institute.

Stefan is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of New York.

Stefan is a member of the American Bar Association and the Estates and Trusts Bar of the District of Columbia. He is a member of the Wealth Counsel and the Business Enterprise Institute, and is currently treasurer and a member of the board of directors for DC Vote and the chairman of the board of the Hilda & Charles Mason Charitable Foundation. Stefan also serves on the advisory board for Eagle Bank and the George Washington Cancer Institute, as well as the Alumni Board for Georgetown Day School.

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

You don’t go into a field that requires cracking people’s heads open or operating on something as delicate as the spinal cord unless you are comfortable with taking risks.”

– Dr. Ben Carson

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

– Corita Kent

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.”

– J.K. Rowling

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.“


– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

My job is my hobby. I come to work to play.”

– Uli Becker, president, Reebok International

Letting go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large—like a beach ball on water.”

– Martha Beck

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.”

– Jalaluddin Rumi

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

– Voltaire

Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

– Maureen Cook

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups.”

– Charles Brower, Advertising Hall of Fame

A diamond is a lump of coal that stuck with it.”

– Norwegian proverb

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

– Jimi Hendrix

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

– Basil King

Do you believe it is important to give back some portion of your wealth to support charitable causes?”

– Steven Schussler

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Almost anyone can start a community, but it takes real talent and commitment to get people to show up and keep coming back.”

– Andy Sernovitz

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki