A multigenerational practice for the families who built Colorado. Independent counsel, considered conversations, and an estate plan that reflects what your family actually believes.
Most attorneys begin with the assets and work backward into the family's wishes. They ask what you have. They do not ask what you want it to do.
What did you build it to mean for your children. What kind of stewards do you want them to become. What values should travel with the dollars. We start with those questions, and let the legal mechanics serve them.
Every engagement begins with unhurried conversations. From those conversations, we build a plan that does three things at once.
Tax-efficient transfer. Properly structured trusts. Succession architecture that will not unravel under stress.
Written letters of intent. Family mission documents. The values articulated alongside the legal instruments.
Family meetings. Next-generation conversations. The soft work that makes hard transitions land.
The firm's work falls into four related practices. Most engagements involve more than one.
To family, key employees, or a thoughtful sale. We coordinate with your CPA, your business attorney, and your wealth advisor.
Read more →Revocable and irrevocable trusts, gifting strategies, generation-skipping plans, charitable structures. Every instrument designed around the conversations first.
Read more →Family councils, mission statements, next-generation programs. The soft infrastructure that makes the hard infrastructure work.
Read more →Serving as trustee where appropriate, or coordinating with the trustee and the family's CPA, wealth advisor, and trust officers through the life of the plan.
Read more →The first is at no charge. The fourth lasts as long as the family does.
Sixty minutes at the Cherry Creek office. We learn about your family. No assessment of fees yet—just the question of whether we are the right fit.
Structured conversations with you, your spouse, your children, and (where appropriate) the next generation of your business. We don't draft a document until we understand what your family actually wants.
An architecture that fits—legal instruments, family governance documents, succession plans. Nothing signed until you can defend every choice in plain language.
We review the plan annually. We walk the next generation through it when they are ready. The relationship is built to last as long as the family does.
An attorney's first job is to understand a family. The drafting comes second.
Thomas Whitmore · 1948Founded in 1948 by Thomas Whitmore. Henry Whitmore ran the firm from 1972 to 2010. His daughter Margaret became principal that year.
Margaret did not plan to join the practice. After Williams and Yale Law, she spent seven years at Cravath in New York. In 1991, she was brought in on a family estate that had been planned to technical perfection—and watched the family come apart over it in the months that followed. She returned to Denver in 1992 with the conviction that the conversation, not the paperwork, was the work.
The firm has three attorneys today: Margaret and two partners she has hired over the past decade, Eleanor Park (joined 2014) and David Linn (joined 2019). Two paralegals. The firm remains small by design.
More about the firm →The first meeting is private and at no charge. Margaret meets with you, you tell her what is on your mind, and we both decide whether this is the right relationship.
Schedule a private conversation → Margaret Whitmore Principal · Whitmore Estate Counsel