Shaun Michael McNaughton

Shaun solves estate planning problems for high-net-worth individuals, families, and business owners. Many of those problems relate to income tax, estate tax, and California property tax issues, and risk exposure. He implements advanced planning techniques that reduce these taxes and risks, thereby increasing amount passing to family and charity. Shaun typically works on large, complex estates with many moving parts and intricate tax issues.

Shaun earned undergraduate degrees (mathematics and philosophy) from the University of California, San Diego; a master’s degree in philosophy (magna cum laude) from Biola University; and his Juris Doctor, from Chapman University School of Law, where he earned an Emphasis in Taxation, completing more tax courses than any Juris Doctor candidate in the history of the law school, and receiving CALI Excellence Awards for earning the highest marks in several courses. Shaun is Board Certified in both Taxation Law and Estate Planning Law by the State Bar of California.

While in law school, the Honorable Tom Campbell, Dean of Chapman University School of Law and former U.S. Congressman, chose Shaun as his research assistant for substantial work for his law review article on the severability of statutes (“Severability of Statutes,” 62 Hastings L. J. 1495 (2011)), a legal topic that was at the forefront of the debate whether the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) was constitutional. In addition, for another article with Dean Campbell, Shaun applied a branch of higher mathematics (known as “topology”) to models of competition in antitrust law.

Shaun is licensed to practice law in California and is also admitted to practice before the United States Federal Court. He lives in Newport Beach where, in his spare time, frequently can be found on a paddle board on Balboa Island or reading everything he can get his hands on: technical tax treatises and journals, analytic philosophy and theology, selected areas of physics, and economics.