“We’re handling all the things that come with people making families and breaking families up,” said Meredith Nicholson, a co-founder and partner in Durham-based family law firm NicholsonPham Law. These matters include marriage, divorce, equitable distribution, and all aspects of parentage for gay and straight couples.
The 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges fundamentally changed the legal landscape for same-sex partners.
“Before 2015, when marriage equality became a reality, LGBTQ families used contract law to secure rights the law didn’t otherwise provide,” said Milan Pham, a co-founder and partner in the firm.
“We used contract law and stitched together rights the community didn’t have using agreements on parenting, partnerships, property and support. We were relying heavily on the goodwill of the community to protect one another.”
Protecting Ourselves
Donald Trump has stated his desire to repeal protections for the LGBTQ community, especially transgender people. The blueprint outlined in Project 2025 and advocated by Trump supporters has sent waves of concern and uncertainty rolling through the gay community.
“Today, I remind our same-sex clients that the history of our having rights in this country is relatively short. Ten to 11 years is not long; for the vast majority of the time that we’ve been a community in the United States, we’ve been bootstrapping ourselves,” said Pham. “We have the tools to protect the community, which we’ve developed from years of having few protections, and we’ll resurrect them as needed. Now, with nearly 40 potential challenges to marriage equality being pipelined to the Supreme Court, we’re looking back in order to move forward.”
“Despite the cultural, political, and legal uncertainties, we are committed to using a combination of legal creativity and zealous client advocacy,” said Nicholson. “The skills used in representing gay clients are the same skills used in representing straight clients, which we have acquired through years of representing outsiders to the law.
“Clients come to us and say, ‘Hey, my marriage is dissolving. I need some help making this work. I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars in court or fighting, but we need to get our affairs in order,” Nicholson added.
Parentage Issues
LGBTQ families continue to face challenges in the arena of parentage. While legal issues resulting from the use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) are equally applicable to same and different sex partners, those issues are more evident in LGBTQ families where one person is likely to be unrelated to a child born into their marriage.
“In North Carolina, a parent is either genetically related to a child or they are a parent by order of the court. The laws of parentage are based on a presumption that two people have had sex, and they had a genetically related child, or if not, that they have adopted.”
“That’s often not true for same sex couples or different sex couples dealing with infertility. The law is slow to change [to accommodate ART]. We’ve always had to secure legal parentage for same-sex couples in order to make it portable across all states. And technically straight folks using surrogacy or donor gametes or donor embryos require the same protections whether they know it or not. The path to securing parentage isn’t always known or clear and the dangers of failing to secure parentage are increasing in the age of 23andMe” says Pham.
At the Forefront
Nicholson and Pham met during their first year at UNC School of Law. Both came from entrepreneurial families and had been encouraged to own their own businesses. They launched the firm in 2009 and quickly began making a name for themselves working with the LGBTQ community. “We found ourselves at the forefront of rapidly changing law since our inception.”
Nicholson is an adoption fellow in the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys. Pham serves on the National Family Law Advisory Council of the National Center for LGBT Rights and is an adoption and assisted reproductive technology fellow with the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys.
Sharon Thompson became of counsel to the firm in 2012. She is considered a pioneer in the LGBTQ legal community, having started her practice in 1976, long before many of the laws on the books today were enacted. “Sharon’s advice and guidance have been invaluable, particularly now when days seem darkest as a reminder of the incredible strides we have made in LGBTQ rights in such a short amount of time and a reassurance that within the community we are developing the resources we need to reach a future where equality is real,” said Pham.
Collectively, the firm has become a resource on the legal issues of emerging family structures for NC families and the NC judicial system. While the law continues to evolve slowly, NC family structures are shifting in pace with the times. “We’ve seen an increase in requests for assistance not only to protect LGBTQ families but multi “parent” families and multi partner households,” said Pham.
“We have had judges call us to say, ‘Hey, we’ve received this petition, can you help us understand what the law says in this area,’” said Pham. “And before we submit any novel legal issue to a judge which they may never have seen, I’ll have a meeting with the judge and ask, ‘Your Honor, hypothetically, if this kind of issue were to come before you, what would you require in order to grant such a request?’”
Comfort and Reassurance
“There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not receiving an email or a call from someone who just needs a bit of reassurance, who doesn’t understand or remember [that we’ve seen these problems before] because they are younger or they weren’t in the movement [before 2015],” said Pham.
“I provide clients with comfort in addition to legal advice,” Pham continued. “They come in, and I can just feel their fear dissolve when I say, ‘Everything’s not going to disappear. Your marriage will continue to be respected.’ A lot of my job these days, in addition to being a lawyer, is to be a counselor at law.”
“We work with a lot of folks in their 40s and 50s who are getting to a point where they are unable to be married to a different sex person anymore, and they are no longer able to live in a closet,” said Nicholson. “And when we find a way for somebody to begin a new life with dignity and remain amicable and remain a parent, that’s pretty satisfying.”
“When the road for client success has yet to be paved, or the path isn’t clear, we get to do something extraordinary,” said Pham. “We lay the path upon which our community walks every day. There’s a lot of love in that kind of law practice.”
The post NicholsonPham Law: ‘We Have the Tools to Protect the LGBTQ Community’ appeared first on Attorney at Law Magazine.
