A soldier at Fort Carson gets orders with a few weeks' notice. A Space Force officer at Peterson learns her next assignment is overseas. Thousands of Springs families know life can be reorganized by a single set of orders — and their estate plans need to be ready before the plane leaves.
Military families face planning questions most civilian checklists never mention: powers of attorney robust enough for a spouse to manage everything during a deployment, guardianship arrangements when both parents serve, and survivor benefits that must be coordinated rather than left on autopilot.
Whiteford's Colorado team serves Colorado Springs families — military and civilian alike. Backed by a Chambers-ranked national trusts and estates practice, we build plans that travel well and stay understandable to the spouse who runs things alone.
Deployment-aware planning, done before it's urgent
The weeks before a deployment are the worst possible time to think clearly about legal documents. A better approach treats readiness as routine: durable financial and medical powers of attorney a spouse can actually use with banks and doctors, current wills for both partners, and clear guardianship designations for the children.
Government life insurance, survivor benefit choices, and TSP beneficiary forms all pass outside a will, and they need to point the same direction the plan does. A base legal office produces solid basics; our role is the fuller picture: trusts, blended-family structures, larger assets.
- Powers of attorney drafted to be accepted by real-world banks and medical providers
- Guardianship and standby-guardian planning for children of deploying parents
- Coordination of SGLI, TSP, and survivor benefit elections with the estate plan
- Trust structures for families who have outgrown base legal office documents
For the Springs' civilian families, too
Colorado Springs is far more than its bases. Families in Briargate and Monument raising kids, professionals in the growing medical corridor, retirees — all face the same important questions: will or trust, who steps in if health fails, and how the house passes without court involvement.
Many households here carry a military past even in civilian life — veterans' benefits, a government pension, a former spouse entitled to part of a retirement. Those threads belong inside the estate plan, not alongside it. We map what you actually have, then match the structure to the family.
How we work with Colorado Springs families
It starts with a free Legacy Game Plan Session — a plain-English conversation about your family, your assets, and what you want to happen. Many families begin with the free Colorado Estate Snapshot at /estate-snapshot, which takes minutes and gives us a running start before we meet.
From there we design and draft, and help with the follow-through that makes plans work: retitling assets, fixing beneficiary forms, and setting a review rhythm. For military families, we time that rhythm to orders and retirement, so the plan is ready before life moves again.
