Family Law

Gwen strives to guide clients through their family transitions with intelligence and compassion. With a skill set that includes mediation, interest-based negotiation, litigation, and Collaborative Law, Gwen works with her clients to reach durable solutions via the means most suited to the client’s needs and preferences.

Gwen’s family law practice includes adoptions, assisted reproduction, prenuptial and cohabitation agreements, divorces, domestic partnership dissolutions, child support and parenting plan modifications, non-parental custody actions, paternity matters, relocation disputes, and appeals of family law trial court rulings.  

Adoption and Assisted Reproduction

Gwen’s adoption clients have been married couples, same-sex partners, and single parents.  She has handled numerous Washington re-adoptions of children adopted internationally.  She also routinely counsels birth mothers who are consenting to second-parent adoptions by their same-sex partners.

Gwen has worked with all parties in assisted reproduction agreements -- sperm donors, egg donors and recipient parents -- to ensure that the interests and goals of all parties are being carefully and appropriately addressed.

Prenuptial, Cohabitation and Domestic Partnership Agreements

Gwen encourages couples entering into new stages of their relationships – whether by marrying, moving in together, buying property together, or officially becoming domestic partners via registration or ceremony – to carefully plan for the financial management of their new partnerships, and to investigate and understand the legal consequences of their arrangements. 

She believes that a good relationship agreement can be exceedingly helpful in establishing expectations and practices for a long future together.  And in the event of dissolution of the relationship, a good agreement can minimize conflict and cost.

Gwen makes it her practice not to draft agreements unless the couple is committed to doing so collaboratively, utilizing her either as a mediator and draftsperson (not counsel to both partners), or as counsel to one partner as part of a collaborative team.

Same-Sex Relationships

The establishment of a same-sex partnership should be undertaken as thoughtfully and joyfully as any marriage.  Similarly, the break-up of a same-sex partnership is as serious and difficult as the end of a marriage, and needs to be treated with the same care and respect.  

Difficulty lies in the ever-changing legal landscape.  The expectations under which a partnership is formed should match, as much as possible, the protections and obligations afforded by the law.  And yet “the law” of same-sex relationships is a moving target.  Couples may now need to ask, are we married in this jurisdiction, or aren’t we?  Can we be?  Can we register as domestic partners and if so, what does that mean?

Gwen’s work includes drafting relationship agreements for same-sex couples, representing non-biological parents in adoptions, and guiding separating partners through the dissolution of their relationship and the division of their assets.  When a separating couple has children, she strives to negotiate parenting and child support agreements that serve the interests of the entire family.