For more than 30 years Don Read has advised family law attorneys throughout Northern California on federal, state and local tax issues that arise in marital dissolutions, pre-marital agreements and other family law contexts.

Don reviews marital settlement agreements and stipulations, prepares domestic relations orders dividing nonqualified deferred and equity compensation benefits, and analyzes a wide variety of family law tax issues. He has obtained numerous private letter rulings from the Internal Revenue Service on these topics, and has occasionally assisted family law clients with IRS audits, particularly of alimony deductions.

A Cal graduate, Don received his J.D., cum laude, from Columbia University and his LL.M. (taxation) from NYU. He was admitted to the California State Bar in 1969 and has been certified as a taxation law specialist by its Board of Legal Specialization since 1981. He has been a Northern California SuperLawyer since 2008.

Don served as an attorney adviser in the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Legislative Counsel in the 1970’s and was a member of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council from 2015 to 2017. He also served as chair of the Taxation Committee of the American Bar Association’s Family Law Section and was an adjunct professor at the USF School of Law. For 30 years he has been tax counsel at Palo Alto’s Lakin-Spears, LLP.

Family law attorneys wanting assistance on a new matter should e-mail the full names (first, middle, last) of both parties and all other names by which they have been known, for conflict check purposes. Please indicate the general nature of the engagement, but do not include confidential information. Please identify whether either party is a non-citizen of the United States — a critical factor in analyzing tax issues.