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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.

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

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

– Charles Brower, Advertising Hall of Fame

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

– Eckhart Tolle

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

Inspiration and genius — one and the same.”

– Victor Hugo

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

– Christopher Morley

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it”

– Andrew Carnegie

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

– Anita Roddick

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”

– President Calvin Coolidge

The gem cannot be polished without friction; nor man perfected without trials.”

– Chinese proverb

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

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

– Winston Churchill

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

– August Rush

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

A lot of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not next week. But today.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

They who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing.”

– Hindu Proverb

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

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

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

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

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

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

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

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

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

– Tony Robbins

Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.”

– Edgar W. Howe

You must have chaos within you, to create a dancing star.”

– Frederic Nietzsche

Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation that indicate opportunities for success.”

– Peter F. Drucker

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

– Winston Churchill

If you were independently wealthy and never had to work a day in your life, would you still choose to spend your time attempting to become a successful entrepreneur?”

– Steven Schussler

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back at you.”

– Byron Katie

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Edison

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make Me Feel Important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.”

– Mary Kay Ash

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard