Meggin Rutherford, JD
Counties served: Jefferson, Adams, Broomfield, Denver, Arapahoe
Attorney, Mediator, COllaborative Divorce Facilitator
Setter Roche Smith & Shellenberger LLP
1860 Blake Street, Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202
(303) 255-3588
About ME
Meggin Rutherford is a Partner at Setter Roche Smith & Shellenberger LLP, where she represents complex families. Recognized as one of Colorado’s premier attorneys for sophisticated family law matters, Meggin has been selected to Super Lawyers throughout her career and received the Colorado Bar Association’s 2021 Young Attorney of the Year Award. She is a Fellow of the Colorado Bar Foundation and a sought-after educator for judges and attorneys in Colorado, nationally, and internationally.
Meggin represents high-net-worth individuals in family law, trust, and probate litigation and settlement matters. Her work routinely involves closely held and family-owned businesses as well as partnerships and complex business holdings, trusts and trust income, restricted stock units, executive and deferred compensation, complex income structures, and tax implications to asset division. Unlike many family law practitioners, Meggin is drawn to the analytical side of the work. She builds and scrutinizes the financial models herself, and her command of the underlying structures and their mathematical and practical interplay allows her to identify options other advisors miss. Beyond divorce, she counsels families on estate planning, probate, and trust administration, and she litigates complex probate and trust disputes.
Her approach is defined by insight, precision, and her unique perspective. Meggin brings clarity to complexity, identifying creative, mutually beneficial solutions that others overlook. Meggin has spent years teaching advanced negotiation and settlement strategy to attorneys and other divorce professionals, and she brings that same skill to her own clients, pursuing efficient, private resolutions through collaborative law, mediation, and negotiation whenever possible. When a matter must be tried, she draws on extensive courtroom experience across hundreds of family law and trust litigation cases in her decades of practice.
Meggin is also recognized as one of Colorado’s leading authorities on families with neurodivergent, special-needs, and medically complex children. Each year she trains hundreds of judges, attorneys, and legal professionals on autism, ADHD, learning differences, and significant mental health issues, helping courts and counsel understand what these families truly need. Families in Colorado with neurodivergent children often also have complex marital estates. Meggin is uniquely positioned to address both, crafting parenting plans, financial structures, long-term planning designed around the child, and guiding parents in identifying and securing the right care and resources.
Meggin also serves families as a neutral, acting as arbitrator, mediator-arbitrator, or collaborative neutral to assist families to reach agreements privately and without court involvement. She also serves as Special Master, Parenting Coordinator/Decision-Maker (PC/DM), Child’s Legal Representative (CLR), and Guardian ad Litem (GAL), exclusively for families navigating neurodivergence or complex medical needs. She provides consulting and expert witness services in family law, complex financial issues in divorce, neurodivergent and medically complex children, and disability law. A past President and current Vice President for Education of Colorado Collaborative Divorce Professionals, Meggin serves on numerous committees dedicated to improving the justice system and has repeatedly testified before Colorado legislative committees in support of better laws for Colorado families.
EDUCATION
B.A. Political Science and Sociology, 2006, Austin College, Sherman, TX
J.D., University of Colorado Law School, 2009
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
Colorado Collaborative Divorce Professionals
Colorado Bar Association
1st Judicial District Bar Association
Family Law Bar Association
Trusts and Estates Bar Association
COLLABORATIVE TRAININGS Taken
Level 1 Training, 2012
Level 2 Training, 2014
Linda Solomon Training, 2017
Presentations Given
Highly Sensitive People and Guiding Them Through Divorce, 2017
Beginning your Own Law Firm, University of Colorado Law School, 2015