Hans Christian Blum
Rechtsanwalt | Fachanwalt für Erbrecht (Certified lawyer for inheritance law) | Managing Director of the Private Clients GmbH
Languages
- German
- English
- French
Social media
Hans Christian Blum has been advising family business owners and high-net-worth individuals for more than 25 years. The focus of his work is helping his clients protect and secure family businesses and family assets in the long term and keeping peace in the family while doing so.
Clients particularly appreciate his empathetic, structured advice and developing customised, family-friendly solutions together. He often takes on the role of a strategic process manager or family officer. He supports families through all phases of contingency planning, asset structuring – in particular when setting up family pools – and with long-term corporate succession and estate planning. For many families, he has been the central strategic contact for years.
In an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, Hans Christian helps family-owned companies develop courses of action for the long term. This also includes preparing for the possibility of moving abroad from Germany, if desired. He advises on the legal, tax and organisational structuring of international entities, particularly in establishing family holding companies, and supports families in gradually internationalising their asset and life planning. The aim is to create stable, legally compliant and flexible structures across generations.
As a personal confidant, Hans Christian Blum is regularly appointed as executor of wills. In this role, he ensures that last wills and testaments are executed in a reliable manner. He provides clear, legally compliant and conflict-free estate administration or long-term management of complex estate assets.
During and after the sale of a family business, he supports family-owned businesses with strategic reorganisation. This includes setting up their own single or virtual family office and structuring assets after an exit. In doing so, he helps avoid the typical mistakes in the phase following the sale of the company and establish sustainable structures for the long term.
He also provides advice on national and cross-border asset and corporate succession, matrimonial property regime planning, investment management and the representation of heirs, beneficiaries of compulsory portions and executors in complex estate disputes. He specialises in drafting wills, contracts of inheritance, marriage contracts, gift models and establishing German and international foundation structures in both private and corporate contexts.
Hans Christian founded the German private clients practice at CMS and headed it for more than ten years. He then took over as co-head of the global CMS Private Clients Group.
Since 2012, he has been head of the Institute for Inheritance Law of the German Lawyers' Institute (DAI). There, he initiated the training programme for certified executors and was responsible for the programme a lecturer for almost a decade. He also lectures at renowned universities and institutions, including Duale Hochschule Stuttgart, EBS Business School, the Stuttgart Bar Association and the Württemberg Academy of Administration and Economics.
He is co-editor of "Erben und Vermögen" (NWB Verlag), co-author of the Beck online commentary on the law on compulsory portions, co-author of the handbook "Familienunternehmen und Unternehmerfamilien" and the "Handbuch Pflichtteilsrecht" and has published numerous articles on strategic succession planning. He is also a sought-after speaker in Germany and abroad.
