A Conversation With ... Clifford S. Brown

Carnahan, Evans, Cantwell & Brown was founded in 1979. Almost exclusively, I do trust and estate work, including tax-related work and what’s called fiduciary litigation. When you’ve got a trust or an estate that has a problem that requires court intervention, I’m involved in that type of lawsuit.

What are some key issues right now with the types of cases you work with?

Right at the moment, from the estate tax perspective, we have a law in place that was a temporary fix that Congress enacted in, I believe, 1982. It provided that the rules change every year for a period of 10 years, then bounce back to where they were in 1981, which makes planning extremely difficult, if not impossible. The tax rates, the amount of taxes, all of those things are changing … almost every two years. You’ve got one set of rules in 2004 to 2006; we now have a different set of rules in 2006 to 2009 … Congress has it, presently, on their agenda to address this issue … but it’s made planning extremely difficult. In 2010, it was going to be an entirely different law, just for one year, and then it would come to the estate tax. It has been extremely difficult to draft documents with any duration to them, and of course, clients don’t want their documents drafted every other year as the rules change. (Congress) swore they would get to it this year.

You’ve been in law for 38 years now. How did you get into it?

I haven’t the slightest idea. I was going to college (at University of Missouri-Columbia), I was a language major, and I was anticipating going into the Foreign Service. I was taking French and Russian, and there were only two of us in Russian, so they said, ‘We can’t keep a Ph.D. around to award a degree,’ so we had to look for something else to do. I was just walking down the street by the law school and said, ‘Yes.’ That’s all I know; I don’t know why it was ‘Yes,” instead of, “What are they doing over there?” I walked in and talked to the dean. After I (finished my undergraduate degree) I started law school.

What types of law did you practice in the beginning?

When I graduated, I went to work for a large firm in Kansas City, and I spent my first 20 years of practice there. They required that you circulate through the different types of practices before you chose the one you thought you wanted to do. I started out in litigation, and moved over to the tax arena, and from there in to the estate (law) and stayed put. I enjoyed it … and here I am.

You’re also serving as the current president of the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association. What goals do you have for your tenure?

The primary project that is mine is the establishment of what is called an Inn of Court. It is an entity through which we’re going to try to help new lawyers get the proper mentoring, to get them together with attorneys at various levels of practice, to whom they can go to and say. ‘I’ve got a problem,’ personally or in the practice or with the work, and get the help they need. I’m also on the Board of Law Examiners for the state of Missouri, and one of the major problems that we’re seeing developing is (that) we continue to graduate lawyers at a pretty good rate, but the firms can only absorb so many of them. More and more of them are becoming solo practitioners, or maybe there’s a half a dozen of them that office together, but they don’t have that input from the older lawyers. The idea is to get (new lawyers) associated with people who can help them through those things. Beyond that, it’s just the normal running through the year’s programs, some of which were started by prior presidents. Hopefully, everything geared toward making the judicial system friendlier to people.

What do you enjoy in your free time?

I’m engaged and getting married in July to Sharon Matney. She’s the head of the trust department at Empire Bank. Most of the time when I’m off, we do a lot of work in the yard. I’ve got 10 acres out in the county and lots of plants and flowers to take care of. And right now, we’re remodeling the kitchen, which is expensive, if nothing else.

All of our children are grown, so we’re simply focusing on the grandchildren and spoiling them. I have six (grandchildren), and (Sharon) has one, her first. She’s 1 year old, and she’s a delight.