Malcolm serves as Chief Operating Officer of Aularis Group, responsible for how the firm runs day to day: the process behind each transaction from sourcing through close, the outside professionals and counterparties engaged to execute it, and the internal controls beneath both. He is also the principal of Mountain Empire Legal Services, the elder law and estate planning firm he founded in 2016.
His path here ran through his family's business. For over 175 years, Seaver-Brown Funeral Service and Crematory served families in Marion, Virginia. Malcolm grew up in it but did not join full time until 2015, when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He took over as president after his father's death and ran the business alongside his law practice, managing Seaver-Brown until its sale.
Those years shaped how he works. Sitting with families in the week after a death teaches you quickly which plans hold and which ones fall apart. It is what drew him to estate work, and it taught him to run an organization where mistakes cannot be undone. He reads a transaction the same way he learned to read a plan, from the far end, asking what it looks like years later to the person who has to live with it.
He studied finance at Virginia Tech, took his J.D. at Florida State, and holds an LL.M. from Duke. What all of it comes down to is that what you own should end up with the people you meant it to reach, and the structure holding it should hold up years after anyone stops paying attention.
Malcolm lives in Marion with his wife, Dr. Jenna Moore, a veterinarian, and their children, Zoe and Malcolm V. He enjoys the outdoors, hiking, shooting, sailing, and traveling.
nathan merrill
founder
Nathan Merrill is a Founder and serves as Chief Solutions Architect of Aularis Group. In that role, he is the principal technical legal and tax "architect" behind the structures and strategies Aularis offers. He develops the structural framework for Aularis’s projects—determining how the governing tax rules, ownership, financing, cash flow, tax credits, depreciation, and risk must fit together—and works with Aularis’s business and implementation teams to ensure that each strategy can be executed as designed. In addition to developing Aularis’s structured solutions, Nathan works directly with select clients to develop bespoke strategic plans tailored to their particular objectives, circumstances, and tolerance for complexity and risk.
Nathan is also a founding partner of Goodspeed Merrill, where he heads the firm’s Advanced Tax Strategies practice. For more than twenty years, he has advised entrepreneurs, investors, business owners, and families throughout the life cycle of a business—from formation and capitalization through growth, acquisitions, divestitures, and public offerings exceeding $100 million. His work at Aularis draws on that experience, with particular emphasis on tax-equity transactions, tax-advantaged investments, project structuring, and strategic tax consulting.
Nathan also consults with affluent families and successful enterprises to create sustainable governance and tax efficient operations for generations. That long-term perspective informs his technical work at Aularis, where a structure must do more than satisfy the tax rules: it must reflect the underlying economics and serve a durable business purpose.
Nathan earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was named to the Order of Barristers, and his LL.M. in taxation from the University of Denver. He earned bachelor’s degrees in communications and political science from the University of Utah.
Nathan and his wife have four children. He is a lifelong percussionist, a hobby gardener, and happiest on the remote ranch he intends to preserve for future generations.
Malcolm serves as Chief Operating Officer of Aularis Group, responsible for how the firm runs day to day: the process behind each transaction from sourcing through close, the outside professionals and counterparties engaged to execute it, and the internal controls beneath both. He is also the principal of Mountain Empire Legal Services, the elder law and estate planning firm he founded in 2016.
His path here ran through his family's business. For over 175 years, Seaver-Brown Funeral Service and Crematory served families in Marion, Virginia. Malcolm grew up in it but did not join full time until 2015, when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He took over as president after his father's death and ran the business alongside his law practice, managing Seaver-Brown until its sale.
Those years shaped how he works. Sitting with families in the week after a death teaches you quickly which plans hold and which ones fall apart. It is what drew him to estate work, and it taught him to run an organization where mistakes cannot be undone. He reads a transaction the same way he learned to read a plan, from the far end, asking what it looks like years later to the person who has to live with it.
He studied finance at Virginia Tech, took his J.D. at Florida State, and holds an LL.M. from Duke. What all of it comes down to is that what you own should end up with the people you meant it to reach, and the structure holding it should hold up years after anyone stops paying attention.
Malcolm lives in Marion with his wife, Dr. Jenna Moore, a veterinarian, and their children, Zoe and Malcolm V. He enjoys the outdoors, hiking, shooting, sailing, and traveling.
Malcolm M. Brown, IV, JD, LLM
Chief Operating Officer
Malcolm serves as Chief Operating Officer of Aularis Group, responsible for how the firm runs day to day: the process behind each transaction from sourcing through close, the outside professionals and counterparties engaged to execute it, and the internal controls beneath both. He is also the principal of Mountain Empire Legal Services, the elder law and estate planning firm he founded in 2016.
His path here ran through his family's business. For over 175 years, Seaver-Brown Funeral Service and Crematory served families in Marion, Virginia. Malcolm grew up in it but did not join full time until 2015, when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He took over as president after his father's death and ran the business alongside his law practice, managing Seaver-Brown until its sale.
Those years shaped how he works. Sitting with families in the week after a death teaches you quickly which plans hold and which ones fall apart. It is what drew him to estate work, and it taught him to run an organization where mistakes cannot be undone. He reads a transaction the same way he learned to read a plan, from the far end, asking what it looks like years later to the person who has to live with it.
He studied finance at Virginia Tech, took his J.D. at Florida State, and holds an LL.M. from Duke. What all of it comes down to is that what you own should end up with the people you meant it to reach, and the structure holding it should hold up years after anyone stops paying attention.
Malcolm lives in Marion with his wife, Dr. Jenna Moore, a veterinarian, and their children, Zoe and Malcolm V. He enjoys the outdoors, hiking, shooting, sailing, and traveling.
Malcolm serves as Chief Operating Officer of Aularis Group, responsible for how the firm runs day to day: the process behind each transaction from sourcing through close, the outside professionals and counterparties engaged to execute it, and the internal controls beneath both. He is also the principal of Mountain Empire Legal Services, the elder law and estate planning firm he founded in 2016.
His path here ran through his family's business. For over 175 years, Seaver-Brown Funeral Service and Crematory served families in Marion, Virginia. Malcolm grew up in it but did not join full time until 2015, when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He took over as president after his father's death and ran the business alongside his law practice, managing Seaver-Brown until its sale.
Those years shaped how he works. Sitting with families in the week after a death teaches you quickly which plans hold and which ones fall apart. It is what drew him to estate work, and it taught him to run an organization where mistakes cannot be undone. He reads a transaction the same way he learned to read a plan, from the far end, asking what it looks like years later to the person who has to live with it.
He studied finance at Virginia Tech, took his J.D. at Florida State, and holds an LL.M. from Duke. What all of it comes down to is that what you own should end up with the people you meant it to reach, and the structure holding it should hold up years after anyone stops paying attention.
Malcolm lives in Marion with his wife, Dr. Jenna Moore, a veterinarian, and their children, Zoe and Malcolm V. He enjoys the outdoors, hiking, shooting, sailing, and traveling.
brian freeman
Malcolm serves as Chief Operating Officer of Aularis Group, responsible for how the firm runs day to day: the process behind each transaction from sourcing through close, the outside professionals and counterparties engaged to execute it, and the internal controls beneath both. He is also the principal of Mountain Empire Legal Services, the elder law and estate planning firm he founded in 2016.
His path here ran through his family's business. For over 175 years, Seaver-Brown Funeral Service and Crematory served families in Marion, Virginia. Malcolm grew up in it but did not join full time until 2015, when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He took over as president after his father's death and ran the business alongside his law practice, managing Seaver-Brown until its sale.
Those years shaped how he works. Sitting with families in the week after a death teaches you quickly which plans hold and which ones fall apart. It is what drew him to estate work, and it taught him to run an organization where mistakes cannot be undone. He reads a transaction the same way he learned to read a plan, from the far end, asking what it looks like years later to the person who has to live with it.
He studied finance at Virginia Tech, took his J.D. at Florida State, and holds an LL.M. from Duke. What all of it comes down to is that what you own should end up with the people you meant it to reach, and the structure holding it should hold up years after anyone stops paying attention.
Malcolm lives in Marion with his wife, Dr. Jenna Moore, a veterinarian, and their children, Zoe and Malcolm V. He enjoys the outdoors, hiking, shooting, sailing, and traveling.