Hans Christian Blum

Hans Christian Blum advises entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals. His clients primarily aim at protecting and preserving family businesses/family assets as well as keeping peace in the family. In this context, they particularly appreciate Hans Christian’s empathic advisory work and his focus on jointly developing individual solutions for each family in question. As a long-standing and valued strategic partner, he often acts as a process manager or family officer. He guides families through the individual steps of business continuity plans, asset structuring (particularly setting up family pools) and long-term succession planning.

During and after the sale of family businesses, Hans Christian advises entrepreneurial families on their strategic repositioning, for example when setting up either their own physical or virtual family office, and he helps them prevent typical mistakes often made after selling a company.

Hans Christian advises on German as well as cross-border asset and corporate succession planning, matrimonial property regimes and corporate investment management. In individual cases, he also executes wills and acts for heirs, persons entitled to a statutory share as well as for executors in inheritance disputes. Alongside drawing up wills, contracts of inheritance, marriage contracts or advising on making gifts, he furthermore focuses on the establishment of private and corporate foundations in Germany or abroad.

Hans Christian joined CMS in 2000. Since 2019, he has been co-head of the international CMS Private Clients Group and he managed the firm’s German Private Clients Group from 2010 until the beginning of 2021. He heads the Institute for Inheritance Law of Deutsches Anwaltsinstitut e.V. (German Lawyers’ Institute) and has been teaching at a number of renowned universities and institutions in Germany such as Duale Hochschule Stuttgart (university combining academic studies with work experience, EBS Business School, Stuttgart Bar Association or Württembergische Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie (academy for administrative and business studies. Apart from regularly publishing articles on succession planning, he is the co-publisher of the “Erben + Vermögen” journal and co-authored part of the section on the right to a statutory share in a leading German online commentary as well as guides on family businesses, entrepreneurial families and statutory share legislation. Hans Christian is also a popular speaker on his areas of expertise.

Memberships & Roles

• Head of the Institute for Inheritance Law of Deutsches Anwaltsinstitut e.v. (DAI)
• Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP)
• 2008 - 2012: Chairman of the Stuttgart Bar Associations‘ examination board that certifies lawyers as inheritance law specialists

Publications

• Podcast: Interview von Christian Hammes mit Hans Christian Blum zu Fragestellungen vor, während und nach dem Unternehmensverkauf“
• Beitrag “Asset Protection für Start-up’ler”, starting-up.de, January 2019
• Mitherausgeber: Fachzeitschrift Erben und Vermögen, NWB Verlag