Ms. Cherish van Mullem
Director, Tax Services
LaPorte CPAs & Business Advisors
Cherish joined LaPorte in 2018 where she provides tax planning, advisory, and compliance services to a variety of clients, with a focus on estate, gift, and succession planning, state and local taxation, and family business tax planning. Cherish is also an adjunct professor at LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center where she teaches Income Tax I.

Cherish began her professional career representing the Internal Revenue Service before the US Tax Court on procedural and tax controversy issues and contributing to the drafting of regulations dealing with tax collection issues. She later worked for a large regional law firm. Cherish’s legal practice consisted of counseling and representing clients on trust and estate planning and administration (successions); federal, state, and international taxation; and entity governance issues.
Cherish has extensive experience assisting a wide variety of nonprofit clients through the lifecycle of their needs from tax exempt status through compliance and operations to dissolution. In addition, she has assisted nonprofit clients with formation, governance, and reinstatement issues.
As a member of the LaPorte Transaction Advisory Services team, Cherish helps partnerships, S corporations and closely held businesses with options on structuring transactions and operations. She also guides her clients on sales and use tax issues.

Cherish received a Master of Laws in Tax from New York University School of Law and a Juris Doctorate and Bachelor of Science in Accounting, both from Louisiana State University.

She is a Certified Public Accountant, Board Certified Estate Planning and Administration Specialist and Board Certified Tax Law Specialist both as Certified by the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization. She is a Former LSBA Tax Section Chair, Tax Specialization Committee Member and a Member of the New Orleans Estate and Business Planning Council. She is also a contributing author for the book “Estate Planning in Louisiana,” 2017–2023. In 2022, she was nominated as a City Business Woman of the Year for Non Profit Organizations.

Mr. Joseph T. Wilson
Liskow & Lewis
Joe Wilson is a business and trusts and estates lawyer focusing on real estate, finance, general business, and estate planning and probate matters. Joe represents business owners, real estate developers, lenders, and manufacturing and industrial facilities operators on a multitude of legal and operational issues, including property acquisitions, sales and development, title insurance, corporate structuring and governance, and regulatory compliance. In addition to his corporate representations, Joe has established himself as a leader in the field of private wealth legal services and succession planning. Joe regularly advises corporate fiduciaries, individuals, family offices, and high-net-worth clients on a wide range of estate planning, probate and administration needs, including the drafting and oversight of wills, trusts and family succession plans, the development and implementation of gifting strategies and tax minimization efforts, as well as charitable and for-profit asset acquisitions and divestitures. Clients frequently engage Joe to negotiate, draft, and interpret purchase agreements, leases, operating agreements, wills, trusts, bylaws and other organizational documents, loans, and security agreements. Joe is a state-licensed title insurance agent, issuing title insurance policies through Lewis Title Co., the firm’s in-house title agency.

Joe is a frequent public speaker on trusts and estates and business law topics, focusing his presentations on legal issues that affect the lives and business operations of his clients.

Joe graduated summa cum laude from Louisiana State University’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as a Senior Editor of the Louisiana Law Review. He received the Law Review’s Vinson & Elkins Award for the Best Student Casenote or Comment.