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NATALYA EVANS YOUR FAMILY MATTERS LAW FIRM
IN CONVERSATION WITH NATALYA EVANS OF YOUR FAMILY MATTERS LAW FIRM, DISCUSSING FAMILY LAW AND ESTATE PLANNING. INTERVIEW FACILITATED BY WES ROBERTS | COMPILED BY BARBIE HEIT
SHARE WITH OUR READERS A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF, YOUR PRACTICE, AND WHAT SERVICES YOU PROVIDE. NATALYA EVANS: I'm the founder and managing attorney at Your Family Matters. We are a law firm specializing in keeping families out of court and out of conflict. That's what we do, it is our passion. We focus on family law and estate planning. I started my practice almost 11 years ago now. My background is in business and I initially started practicing in business law, but I didn't feel like I was making a difference. So, when I had an opportunity to start my own practice, it gave me a chance to sit back and think about what I want
ENGAGING READERS THROUGH BRANDED STORYTELLING.
to do, and that was to make an impact in our community. I started practicing in the area of family law and learned that for the majority of families, going to court is a process that is just adversarial. It adds fuel to the fire. Couples go through this adversarial process, throw mud in each other's face, and then, at the end of the process, they’re supposed to walk out and somehow co-parent their children together and be civil toward each other. It takes a long time. It's very expensive. l decided to get trained in collaborative law which is actually a team-based approach. Everybody that's part of the process agrees and commits to working through peacefully,
to reach a resolution. And, just seeing the difference in the outcomes of families going to court versus collaborative…I couldn't do court anymore. So, I stopped taking litigation cases a little over five years ago, and really focused on keeping families out of court, whether it's the whole collaborative process, mediation, negotiation, whatever it is, just trying to help them make it through with as much dignity intact as possible, and really focusing on their kids or getting to the other side and rebuilding their lives, starting over. Estate planning is another area where I felt I could make an impact. I was a single mom for a while. I remember when
I did my own estate plan, I just felt like such a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I always had the fear of what would happen to my kids if something happened to me, so I started taking every class I could in estate planning. I initially started focusing on families with minor children because that is a demographic that is just so widely underserved by the estate planning industry, which is usually focused on serving the elderly population. A good example of that is, most estate planning attorneys, as a matter of practice, just put a guardian nomination into a will. Well, what if a parent is incapacitat-
