Cathy brings over fifteen years of experience helping families with trust, estate, and charitable planning. She has a passion for understanding clients’ circumstances and needs so as to provide customized solutions for their estate planning needs. Prior to working at MGD Law, Cathy served as Senior Vice President, Senior Trust Officer at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. In her role there, Cathy administered investment and trust accounts for U.S. Trust’s high net worth clients. She led a weekly fiduciary roundtable to spot issues, brainstorm solutions and educate other Trust Officers on complex fiduciary matters. In addition, she proactively identified and evaluated fiduciary problems to help prevent and mitigate risk for the Bank and her clients. She drove a culture of unique, proactive problem solving.
Cathy began her career as an attorney at a large St. Louis-based law firm with a significant estate-planning department, assisting high-net-worth clients with estate planning and tax strategies. She proposed, created and implemented sophisticated estate plans. She enjoyed working with clients and their families to educate them and ensure they understood, and were comfortable with, their estate plan. In addition, she partnered with their financial advisors to ensure a seamless plan.
Cathy is an active member of the Missouri Bar and the Probate and Trust Section of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis.
Estate and Wealth Planning
Advice for Trustees & Personal Representatives
Trust and Estate Administration
Charitable Planning
Tax Advice
Estate Tax, Gift Tax, Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax, and Fiduciary Income Tax Law
Charitable & Nonprofit Advice
Post Death Administration
Advanced Planning
Closely Held Businesses, Succession Planning
Premarital and Post-Marital Agreements
Fiduciary Litigation
Guardianships & Conservatorships
Missouri Bar
Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis
Memory Care Home Solutions Volunteer of the Year – Thayer Family – 2013
The Woman’s Exchange of St. Louis, Past Chair of Development
Crisis Nursery, Past Member of the Young Professionals Board
MGD Law is open, operating, and committed to providing legal services to our clients with careful attention to the St. Louis County Business Reopening Procedures. The health and safety of our clients, attorneys and staff is of paramount importance to us. Our office complies with the St. Louis County Business Reopening Protocols. Many of us are working remotely but we continue to have a core presence of attorneys and staff in the office each business day. We remain available to assist you with your regular estate planning, estate and trust administration needs, and emergency estate planning needs. We are assisting clients by “low tech” methods like phone calls, faxes, e-mail, U.S. Mail, Federal Express, masked and distanced in-person meetings in our large conference room, and socially-distanced outdoor signings for estate planning documents, as well as “high tech” methods like video-conferenced meetings through Zoom, Facetime, Teams or Skype, document sharing through our secure client portal, and video-conferenced document signings in compliance with applicable Illinois and Missouri emergency orders allowing video-signings. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you need our help. Contact information for all of our attorneys and staff can be found on the Our Team page of our website. You can also call us on our main number, 314.721.7778 or email us at info@mgdlawfirm.com.
