Christopher M. Vann

I was about five years into a six-plus year, contentious, complex, and difficult Probate Case that led to multiple Estate Case Files, a Civil Suit, and a Special Proceeding adjudicated directly by the Clerk of Superior Court. This case was very difficult for myself, on a variety of levels, that incl...uded out-of-state travel, false accusations of avaricious and greedy ex-family, the need to hire several different attorneys at different times during the six-plus year 'process' of the Court. Chris came in around the beginning of the 5th year, and stayed with it to its recent conclusion. I wish that I had found him two or three years earlier. He proved himself to be reliable, honest, and capable - working with me for the most part from a distance, and against very competent but sincerely malevolent opposition. This Case involved three heirs to an Estate, where the significant cash assets of the Deceased Parent were wrongly sequestered and kept by one son [not equally divided as the LW&T specified] - the same son that also took all physical property from the Parents' House in SouthPark, culled through it to take what he wanted, then burned and buried the remainder on a piece of land he [still] owns off of Waxhaw Indian Trail Road. Chris came in to facilitate an equitable sale and then distribution of proceeds from liquidation of the house. This after years of trying to sell the property though cooperation of the three brothers - one was amenable, the other only pretended to agree, then raising objections and changing course 180 degrees whenever we came close to a point in time for actually putting the house on the market. The bad brother also unilaterally rented our Parents' House [he took $30K], retaining all rent proceeds for himself. After the house was finally sold for a decent price, through much wrangling and several hearings, and threats to sell below the appraised value [in violation of the Court's Order] => the house was sold and a 'Disbursement Hearing' was held. For whatever reason, and I withhold my conviction regarding the Court - the Presiding [Elected] Clerk of Court, refused to hear the two good brother's arguments in favor of dividing rent proceeds in 1/3's [sworn testimony was provided], AND in addition to this was just about ready to give the bad brother an additional $12K 'off the top' - when Chris spoke up and asked for time to discuss options between parties. The Presiding Officiate left the room for about an hour [much too long, adding to everyone's legal bill - except that Chris forgave this time in final billing, and I can only say that this also speaks to his character] - she left, and the attorneys discussed, then they discussed options with us, the bad brother left the room with counsel, and in the end, after about twenty minutes, we all agreed to settle to divide the proceeds from liquidation of the house by 1/3, allowing the bad brother to retain all rents collected [on a lease in his name only]. This property was partitioned and we were each tenants-in-kind = rents should have been shared. I am not pleased with this, but; Chris prevented a worse catastrophe, and She clearly did not want to hear anything about sharing rents - every attorney privately expressed surprise at this, but; that's how it went, and none of us could have changed it without the bad brother offering up the rents on his own - that he did not do. Evidence for these facts are in the records beginning early in 2009. I mention all of this to say that this was a difficult place for any attorney to begin, five years in, and some would have taken advantage of this charge exorbitant fees. Chris is reasonable in his charges, trustworthy, good for his word, but; he is not as responsive to inquiries, or kept me informed as I would have liked - then again, that would run up costs. He looked through what I provided and matched it to NCGS. He is a good find - like finding a good dentist, they are just not easy to locate.