Adrienne helps clients understand the complexities of estate and wealth planning by answering their questions and explaining complex trust and tax law concepts in comprehensible terms. She will never give you a draft of a trust without a short summary or diagram. Her practice is a full-service practice for estate and wealth planning, ranging from helping young families to document their wishes through the creation and amendment of wills, trusts, and powers of attorney in a basic start-up estate plan, assisting with post-death estate and trust administration, to leading a complex planning effort involving estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax planning, asset protection, prenuptial agreements, cohabitation agreements, vacation property coownership agreements, and creative ways to use applicable trust law to modify Irrevocable Trusts. She strives to bring creativity and personable, effective communication to her work with clients and their team of advisors.
Prior to working at her current firm, Adrienne spent eleven years, three of them as a partner, working with a large St. Louis-based law firm with a significant estate-planning department, assisting high-net-worth clients with strategies to ensure their wealth would be passed on to future generations and their philanthropic wishes would be achieved. She also spent over five years as Senior Trust Counsel at The Commerce Trust Company advising the Trust Company on estate, trust, and tax matters. She assisted Commerce Family Office clients on estate-planning strategies and family wealth education.
Adrienne is an adjunct law professor at Saint Louis University School of Law where she teaches Wills, Trusts, and Estates and Estate Planning.
Adrienne is Chair of the Estate Planning and Probate Committee of the Missouri Probate and Trust Division of the Missouri Bar; an active member of STEP, the Society of Trusts and Estates Professionals, a worldwide professional association advising families on international estate-planning issues; past Chair of the Steering Committee for the Probate and Trust Section of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis; past member of the Missouri Bar Probate and Trust Division Subcommittee to Study the Uniform Electronic Wills Act; the Estate Planning Council of St. Louis; and the Trainer’s Network for 21/64, a body of professional advisors serving high-net-worth families with multi-generational engagement in philanthropy and family enterprise.
Estate & Wealth Planning
Advice for Trustees and Personal Representatives
Trust and Estate Administration
Tax Advice
Estate Tax, Gift Tax, Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax, and Fiduciary Income Tax Law
Charitable and Nonprofit Advice
Post Death Administration
Advanced Planning
Closely Held Businesses, Succession Planning
MGD Law is open, operating, and committed to providing legal services to our clients with careful attention to CDC Guidance.