Doreen Marie Olson

With 30 years of family law experience, Doreen Marie Olson is a partner at Meyer, Olson, Lowy & Meyers, LLP, where she focuses on high-asset divorce and custody cases. She is also often appointed as minor’s counsel by the court.

Olson said she chose family law to positively impact people’s lives during difficult times and finds fulfillment in seeing her clients’ transformations from their initial consultations to the final judgment.

“What’s kept me interested in this career is that I take pleasure in witnessing the transformations in numerous clients, from their initial consultations when many are insecure, scared and lost to the final judgment when they get their footing back, confidence, and are strong human beings,” Olson said. “I also feel a great deal of gratitude when I hear from clients years later who are happy, healthy and have found happiness.”

While client confidentiality precludes discussing any of her cases, she spoke of one matter anecdotally. It was a guardianship case where she and her partner, Lisa Helfend Meyer, successfully obtained a ruling to return a young girl to the custody of her biological mother.

“The mother had fallen on hard times when she became a young single mother,” Olson said. “Her mother had taken her child/granddaughter into her care for what should have been a temporary period and then refused to return her. Our client was an amazing person and mother, it was absolutely the right decision that she be able to raise her daughter, and the court saw this. The hard work truly paid off and now, the entire family is doing extraordinarily well.”

She continued: “Significant challenges were faced in the many delays endemic to the court system, which caused the proceeding to go on for two years. The delay was painful and costly for the client, and no doubt hard on the child who desperately needed security and closure.”

Analyzing current trends, Olson expressed concern about the abuse of domestic violence restraining orders in custody cases and believes the legislature needs to enact measures to prevent this abuse.

“This causes true detriment in terms of the backlog in the system, and where there truly is no domestic violence, the true victims of domestic violence are further harmed,” she said. “The legislature needs to enact further measures to ensure that this process is not abused.”

In her free time, Olson supports several causes, including The Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, which assists low-income clients who are victims of domestic violence in obtaining restraining orders; The LevittQuinn Center, a nonprofit family law firm protecting children of families in crisis; and PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), which provides support to homeless individuals and families.