Cindy Brittain

Cynthia "Cindy" Brittain is a private wealth services attorney in Holland & Knight's Century City and Newport Beach offices. Ms. Brittain works closely with private clients in the U.S. and around the world, designing efficient strategies that maximize tax benefits for individuals and their companies while meeting personal wealth transfer and business succession needs.

International Tax and Estate Planning. Ms. Brittain has decades of experience advising high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families on domestic and international income and estate tax planning strategies and philanthropic endeavors. Her practice offers significant cross-border experience for families whose members are multinational and whose companies have a global footprint. Ms. Brittain helps clients navigate complex issues relevant to international and domestic wealth and asset transfers. She also assists with pre-immigration planning and international corporate tax matters, leveraging her extensive experience with the cross-border regulatory laws that affect planning and compliance. She is frequently sought out by international private clients and their advisory teams in urgent, high-stakes situations to help mitigate legal and reputational risk.

Hong Kong and United Kingdom. Ms. Brittain lived and worked in Hong Kong, where she served Chinese and Asian clients with their U.S. estate and tax planning. Having also lived in London, her experience in-country provides a solid foundation for U.S.-U.K. estate and income tax integration.

International Charitable Giving. As part of Ms. Brittain's practice, she advises individual clients and large nonprofit organizations on cross-border philanthropy related to compliance and due diligence. She also designs effective tax deduction strategies using dual-qualified charities for U.S. citizens living abroad. Ms. Brittain is an instructor for the American Institute for Philanthropic Studies Certified Specialist in Planned Giving program.

Sharia Law Estate Planning Compliance. Ms. Brittain has worked with many clients who wish to create desired estate planning when Sharia law generally applies to their estate assets.

Private Trust Companies and Family Offices. Pooling family assets offers several advantages, including succession planning, access to investments that would otherwise be unavailable to certain family entities and individuals, centralization of assets management decisions and the resulting reduction of overall investment fees and potential creditor protection. Ms. Brittain creates such entity structures to accomplish those goals and works with each client's investment advisors to ensure that appropriate investment policies are developed focused on the objectives applicable to the client's taxable and nontaxable estate. Ms. Brittain uses private trust companies and family office structures to retain the historic legacies and family values inherent in generational wealth.

Pre-Liquidity Event Planning. Prior to a sale of a business or a major liquidity event, there are several wealth transfer opportunities that should be considered. Such strategies focus on passing potential wealth to future generations in a tax-efficient manner. Ms. Brittain is often called upon to assist owners of businesses who are embarking upon such transactions to guide them in this critical pre-transaction planning process.

Domestic Estate Planning. Ms. Brittain counsels clients and their advisors on the implementation of sophisticated estate planning techniques designed to increase, maintain and transfer wealth in a manner that is consistent with each client's intended legacy. As part of this process, Ms. Brittain creates estate plans and drafts a wide range of estate and tax planning instruments, including wills, revocable trusts, insurance trusts, dynastic trusts, charitable trusts, irrevocable defective grantor trust with related gifts and sales strategies and beneficiary deemed owned trust (BDOT) using Internal Revenue Code Section 678.

Anti-Money Laundering and Enforcements. Ms. Brittain also provides hands-on guidance for financial institutions and corporate trustees who work with international clients, advising on global enforcement initiatives relevant to companies, accounting firms and law firms that handle international clients. She has assisted in development and implementing anti-money laundering compliance manuals and programs for financial institutions and other clients in connection with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act.

In addition to her legal practice, Ms. Brittain is a frequent speaker on international estate and tax planning issues for beginners and advanced strategists. She also serves as an adjunct professor teaching International Estate Planning at California State University – Northridge and California Lutheran University

Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Brittain was an attorney at a boutique private wealth services law firm in Los Angeles, serving as head of its international estate planning practice.