Sebastian Pascu is a partner and currently the Chair of KJK’s Estate, Wealth & Succession practice group with a comprehensive practice focused on estate planning, business succession, mergers and acquisitions, and complex federal and state tax matters. His work centers on structuring tax-efficient solutions for high-net-worth individuals, multigenerational families, closely held businesses, and fiduciaries, with an emphasis on preserving wealth, managing risk, and navigating sophisticated transactional and compliance challenges.
Sebastian advises clients on the full spectrum of estate planning, from foundational wills and trusts to advanced wealth transfer strategies designed for families with substantial business or real estate holdings. His experience includes sales and gifts to grantor trusts, partnership freezes, GRATs, SLATs, BDITs, ILITs, and dynasty planning, as well as charitable strategies involving private foundations, charitable remainder trusts, donor-advised funds, and non-exempt charitable trusts. He routinely integrates lifetime gifting strategies with estate planning documents to ensure continuity, tax efficiency, and long-term administrative viability across generations.
A significant portion of Sebastian’s practice involves tax structuring for complex business transactions. He regularly serves as lead tax counsel on taxable and tax-free mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganizations, recapitalizations, and dispositions, including spin-offs and split-offs. His transactional experience spans both buyer- and seller-side planning and includes Qualified Small Business Stock (§1202), personal goodwill, partnership and LLC structuring, unit-class tracking, and tax-free asset divisions. He also advises startups and joint ventures on entity selection and the use of tax incentives such as Qualified Opportunity Zones, Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits, and New Markets Tax Credits.
Sebastian has deep experience representing clients before the Internal Revenue Service and state tax authorities, including audits, appeals, mediation, and private letter ruling requests, with direct engagement at the IRS National Office level. He frequently authors tax opinions on partnership disguised sale rules, real estate credit regimes, and other highly technical areas of the tax law.
In addition to planning and transactional work, Sebastian counsels fiduciaries and beneficiaries on trust and estate administration, conflict avoidance, fiduciary liability, and income tax planning for estates and trusts. He regularly assists with probate and estate administration, succession planning for family-owned businesses, post-transaction governance, and trust structures holding significant business assets. He also collaborates closely with litigators in estate and trust disputes and is frequently engaged to serve as or advise independent trustees.
Sebastian is also experienced in executive compensation and nonqualified deferred compensation planning under Section 409A, including phantom equity, stock appreciation rights, profits interests, severance arrangements, and incentive compensation design.
His practice is informed by years of experience in both public accounting and private legal practice, giving him a practical, detail-oriented approach that resonates with clients and their advisors. He regularly works alongside accountants, financial advisors, valuation professionals, and family office teams to deliver coordinated, technically rigorous solutions.
Sebastian is a frequent author and speaker on advanced estate planning and tax topics and has been consistently recognized for his work in tax law. He is admitted to practice in Ohio and holds a J.D. from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, where he served as an Articles Editor for a law journal.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – KJK is pleased to announce that David Ebersole has joined the firm as Partner and Director of Economic Development & Incentives, expanding the firm’s capabilities in development finance, public-private partnerships and incentive strategy for real...
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