Chloe Russell leads the estate planning practice at CVDL, where she helps individuals and families across Missouri put the right plans in place to protect what they’ve built and provide for the people they love. She believes estate planning isn’t just for the wealthy. It’s for anyone who wants peace of mind about the future, whether that means a straightforward will for a young family, a succession plan for a farm that’s been in the family for generations, or a strategy to pass a local business to the next owner.

Chloe works with clients from every walk of life: farmers and landowners, business owners, retirees, professionals, and families simply wanting to get their affairs in order. She regularly drafts wills, powers of attorney, and a wide range of trust agreements tailored to each client’s situation. While her focus is on planning so families have the right structures in place, she also guides clients through probate and trust administration when the time comes.

That same depth serves her high-net-worth clients well. Over the course of her career, Chloe has advised individuals with net worths reaching up to $100 million on tax planning, lifetime gifting strategies, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax issues. She is well-versed in the specialized tools these plans often call for, including irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs), intentionally defective grantor trusts (IDGTs), charitable remainder and lead trusts, and family limited partnerships and LLCs used for closely held business and farm succession.

She also has substantial experience helping clients who may need other advanced planning tools, such as a Special Needs Trust for a child or relative with a disability, structured to preserve eligibility for public benefits. She brings that sophistication to every matter, scaling her approach to fit each client’s needs and goals.

In addition to estate planning, Chloe’s practice has included real estate and land use matters, conservation and environmental issues affecting farms and rural property, and work with nonprofit and charitable organizations. This experience lets her serve clients whose planning touches more than one area of the law.

Chloe earned her J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, in 2019, cum laude, and is licensed in both Illinois and Missouri. She has been recognized as a Super Lawyers Rising Star (2024–2025) in the area of Estate Planning. She also holds a Certificate in Environmental and Energy Law from Chicago-Kent.

Chloe is also a published author and frequent speaker. She co-authored “Look Out for Gen Z: Estate Planning Ideas for the Younger Generation of Beneficiaries,” originally published in the St. Louis Business Journal and republished by estate planning firms nationally, and has presented “Supreme Shift: Connelly v. United States and Its Impact on Business Life Insurance” to a joint program of NAIFA-Cornhusker and the Lincoln Estate Planning Council.

Education: J.D., Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology

Bar Admissions: Illinois and Missouri