Personal Profile

Laywer XiWen Zou is a partner in Sunhold Law Firm based in Shanghai.

Education

XiWen Zou obtained LLM from East China University of Politics & Law and LLM from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Practice Areas

In the field of litigation, Zou has rich experience and insights in the settlement of complex disputes such as divorce property division, child support, family property division, inheritance and succession. Zou is good at summing up the experience of negotiation and litigation from many complex practical cases, and able to safeguard the core interests of clients to the greatest extent. In the non-litigation field, Zou is good at providing in-depth, comprehensive, all-round, personalized and one-stop legal service solutions for private clients using various wealth management tools such as premarital/marital property agreements, top-level design of crporate capital, family agreements, voluntary guardianship, family trusts and offshore structures.

Zou is involved in the following areas in the field of matrimonial and family affairs and wealth inheritance:

1. Marriage and Family Non-litigation

Zou provides professional legal service in the area of matrimonial and family matters catering to private clients' needs that may arise before and after the marriage, including but not limited to (1) pre-marital and intra-marital property management and planning; (2)advice on unmarried relationship and illegitimate child; (3)advice on cross-border marriage;(4)private lawyer.

2. Dispute Resolution for Family Disputes

Sunhold family dispute resolution team is a combination of the firm's elite lawyers in the field of family and private wealth management. The team has extensive experience and unique insights in (1)division of marital property and child custody disputes; (2) property sharing and child custody disputes in cohabitating couples; (3)family relationship (such as child support, spousal support, support for elderly parents) disputes; (4)other disputes due to the division of family property(such as transfer of stock rights, real property disputes); (5)disputes concerning wills and heritance.

3. Family Wealth Management and Inheritance

Sunhold family wealth management and inheritance team is in the lead in China, comprised of the first group of expert lawyers in China who focus on marriage, inheritance field, private wealth inheritance field and lawyers with rich experience in finance (including but not limited to insurance and trust), real estate, domestic and foreign investment and other fields. The team aims at offering deep, comprehensive, personalized and one-stop-shopping legal service including but not limited to (1)design of family trust, wills trust, pension trust, insurance trust, guardianship trust in and outside China; (2)family health investment in and outside China, design of global assets allocation; (3)design of wills(including cross-border wills, administrator of the estate), legacy-support agreement, voluntary guardianship; (4)design of family insurance and funds in and outside China; (5)advice on inheritance in and outside China; (6)service of family agreement and charter.

4. Family Enterprise Management

Family enterprise management is one of the core services offered by Zoe. Zoe and her team provides a full range of legal service to family enterprises including but not limited to (1)design of family enterprises’ business model involving  shareholding structure and incentive mechanism; (2)family enterprise investment and financing, mergers and acquisitions; (3)legal consultant for family enterprise; (4)legal consultant for family affairs; (5)family office.

In terms of professional research, Zou has served a large number of individuals and high net worth clients at home and abroad. She has offered clients and various financial institutions litigation and non-litigation service in matrimonial and family matters, property inheritance, wealth management with her rich experience. She has also provided more than 40 legal seminars for clients. Zou's lectures on professional topics for her fellow lawyers and clients include:

⚫ ‘Highlights, Misunderstandings and Analysis of Judicial Practice in Shanghai Area’

⚫ ‘Analysis of the New Real Estate Policy in Shanghai and its Impact on Matrimonial and Family Cases in 2021’

⚫ ‘Legal analysis of whether "lover's demand for breakup fee constitutes extortion’

⚫ ‘Judicial Practice and Suggestions on Various Types of Real Estate Issues in Divorce Litigation Cases’

⚫ ‘Judicial Practice and Suggestions on Various Types of Equity Issues in Divorce Litigation Cases’

In terms of social activities, Zou initiated and set up a non-profit organization called ’Seabird Law Popularization’ in 2019. She has organized a team of more than ten lecturers and set up a think tank composed of experts in the fields of law and education. She has also conducted hundreds of law lectures in more than 40 streets and schools in Shanghai, such as Xuhui, Hongkou and Songjiang. The targets of Seabird are elites, people with disabilities, widowed elderly, elderly people who have lost their only child, and children in elementary and junior high schools. The purpose is to tell law stories so that people can solve the problems they encounter in daily life through scientific legal thinking even if they don't look for lawyers or search Baidu. This series of activities is meant to make ‘high-level’ law personal. Through this immersion method, we turn the traditional perception of law as "irrelevant and uninteresting" into "interesting and useful". We hope that in the future, learning about law will become a fashionable activity and everyone will improve their legal literacy. We hope that in the future, learning the law will really become a fashion, everyone will improve their knowledge of the rule of law, spread the concept of the rule of law, promote the spirit of the rule of law, and build a rule of law China.

The classic family and marriage cases represented by Zoe are as follows:

1. The divorce case between Mr.Z(the senior executive of a brokerage firm)and Miss.X, which involves diving property in and outside China.  Amount involved was about 1 billion yuan.

2. The divorce case between Mr.C(the president of real estate development company) and Miss.Z, which focus on company stock rights and real estate in many provinces. Amount involved was about 300 million yuan.

3. Representing Zhejiang famous female entreprenuer to deal with marital crisis caused by extramarital affair of the man. Amount involved was about 500 million yuan.

4. Offering a series of legal service for Miss.L(the daughter of a chairman of a listed company in Shandong) and her husband including pre-marital property(both domestic and foreign) arrangement, wealth management, negotiation, documentation and drafting and settlement facilitation. Amount involved was about 500 million yuan.

5. The divorce case between Miss.L and famous entrepreneur Mr.G, which focus on 5 real estate properties involving both parents and foreign children, equity interests in four domestic companies acquired before and after marriage, foreign factory and real estate. Amount involved was about 1 billion yuan.

6.Representing Mr.L(the CEO of a well-known brokerage firm) to deal with a series of litigation and non-litigation cases with his wife and creditors. Difficulties in handling the case: some of the real estate involved in the case were seized; some of the shares were owned by adult children; it was difficult to identify the joint debts of spouses, and the case involved multiple courts. Amount involved was about 800 million yuan.

7. Offering legal service for the divorce case between Mr.N (one of the founders of a proposed domestic unicorn company)and Miss.L, including facilitating a peaceful acceptance of a divorce settlement package by both parties. Also, providing Mr.N with a full range of legal risk tips and practical advice for the future liquidation of his equity interest in a listed company. Amount involved was about 600 million yuan.