505-466-3830
About Us
Our Story
We are a husband and wife team that began our relationship thirty years ago in Washington, DC and central Pennsylvania. We moved to Santa Fe with our growing family in 2003 and settled in Eldorado in 2008. When the opportunity to open a full time practice in Santa Fe arose in 2016, Dan started a general practice in Eldorado. He soon found that most of his clients needed an estate or elder law attorney. When it became clear that there was a gap in services for the aging population, he began to focus his practice there. In 2019, when Jen graduated from the University of New Mexico School of Law, they joined forces to form Brannen & Brannen, LLC, a practice devoted to meeting this need.
Our Team
Daniel E. Brannen Jr.
Attorney
Dan came of age in the eighties during Reaganomics, when business seemed glamorous to a kid in rural Central Pennsylvania who had no idea what to do with his life. This led him to enter the College of Business at Penn State University. Following advice from two dear uncles, he studied accounting (B.A. 1990), trading in glamour for the promise of job security. Undergraduate business law courses sparked enthusiasm for the law, which Dan studied at George Washington University (J.D. with honors 1993). From there, he set out to be a corporate litigator, with thoughts of professional fortune and fame.
Out in the real world, Dan quickly found that family life and job satisfaction mattered most. And that the latter was best achieved by doing meaningful work for good people and communities. Since leaving corporate litigation, he has served nonprofit organizations in the fields of education and democracy, in addition to focusing the core of his practice on estate planning and administration for over a decade now. Dan has been a member of the Santa Fe Estate Planning Council since 2020. He joined the Board in 2023, and currently serves as its President. He is licensed to practice law in New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
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A lifelong bookworm, Dan returned to school to read the Great Books at St. John’s College (M.A. 2016), where he also made some great friends. Outside the law, Dan enjoys reading and book groups, cooking and bread making, drumming and trying to learn the bass, chess, and getting outdoors with his family and the office mascots, Lars and Pablo.
Jennifer E. Brannen
Attorney
Jen came to law later in life. She majored in Comparative Religious Studies at Vassar (B.A. 1994) where she learned to appreciate the lens of religion to illuminate the global forces of history, sociology, and philosophy.
After graduation she landed in Washington, D.C. where she worked with children and, later, the homeless in Pennsylvania. As their family grew, she decided to became a massage therapist so that she could have a more flexible schedule. This brought her family to Santa Fe where she studied at the Scherer Institute in 2003. She soon started her own practice and later incorporated Kinesis Myofascial Integration. In 2016, she recognized that bodywork was taking a toll on her own body. Still wanting to make a positive difference in people's lives, she went back to school to study law and received her J.D at the University of New Mexico School of Law in 2019.
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Jen has been a member of the State Bar of New Mexico’s Elder Law Board since 2021, taking a few turns to serve as Chair. She is now also a member of the Board for the Santa Fe Estate Planning Council (2025-26).
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In her spare time, Jen enjoys photography, reading and writing, painting, and getting out to spend time with her favorite humans and dogs.
Tilcara Webb
Legal Assistant
Lars and Pablo
Firm Mascots
Lars and Pablo are the firm's mascots. They often accompany Jen and Dan to work and get overly excited when people visit. Please knock upon arrival, so we can put them back in their office.