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Overview

Bud helps families protect and preserve their wealth, and he guides owners in planning for the future management and ownership succession of their businesses.

A former leader of the firm’s Private Wealth group, Bud applies his 35-plus years of legal and business experience to guide clients in designing and implementing sophisticated estate plans and business succession and exit plans. His practice also involves estate and trust administration, estate and gift tax planning, buy-sell agreements, charitable planning and asset protection, representation of trustees, creditor protection, divorce protection, and trust and estate dispute resolution.

Bud regularly deals with challenging situations involving the wealth of families and closely held businesses, including situations involving challenging family dynamics. He uses his creativity and depth of knowledge to find the right solutions for each client’s unique circumstances. Bud enjoys the challenge of developing creative solutions to often difficult issues involved in planning for succession of control and ownership of closely held businesses and assisting high net worth clients in avoiding or minimizing exposure to estate taxes.

Bud’s focus is to help those clients who recognize the importance of taking a thoughtful and proactive approach to their estate planning and business succession planning. Many are the beneficiaries of similar planning done by their parents, and they want to pass it forward. Others have seen the negative results of failing to plan properly, and they wish to avoid those problems in their own planning. The payoff is peace of mind from knowing they have done their best to protect not only their immediate families but future generations as well.

Industry

Services

Recognition

  • The Best Lawyers in America®
    • Trusts and Estates, 2003-2025
  • Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent
  • Avvo, Top-Rated Lawyer, 2018
  • Best of the U.S., LLC, Tax & Estate Planning

Education

  • J.D., Saint Louis University School of Law
    • cum laude
    • Saint Louis University Law Journal
  • MBA, Saint Louis University
  • A.B., Saint Louis University

Admissions

  • Missouri
  • Illinois
  • Maryland

Professional Memberships and Certifications

  • American Bar Association
  • The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, Probate and Trust Section, Past Chair
  • Estate Planning Council of St. Louis
  • The Missouri Bar
Legal Updates | March 19, 2024
Guide to Reviewing Your Estate Plan
Outside the Office

Bud cycles and runs for exercise with a group of friends and occasionally competes in charity events.

He enjoys spending time with his family, especially his two young granddaughters. He and his wife travel to Europe, including his wife’s ancestral home of Greece, and visit Bud’s hometown on the eastern shore of Maryland. Bud also likes to read nonfiction, history and suspense novels for pleasure.

Community Leadership

Bud shares his estate planning and charitable planning knowledge in raising legacy funding for a St. Louis plant science research facility.

Since 2011, when Bud instigated the Legacy Advisory Council for the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, he has helped raise money through bequests, inheritances, structured gifts and other estate planning options. Bud is a strong supporter of the Danforth Center’s mission: to improve the human condition through plant science, to preserve and renew the environment, and to enhance the St. Louis area as a world center for plant science.