Leslie L. Abrigo

After 20 years of family law experience, Leslie L. Abrigo said there’s one type of case she likes to assign to newly minted associates.

“Whether you find this to be a positive or negative experience, the domestic violence restraining order trial is a crash course in bench trial basics,” she said. “I have allowed newly minted and sworn in associates to handle domestic violence trials for this very experience.”

Abrigo, a partner at Genesis family law, said she entered the profession with the intention of helping children and victims of domestic violence emotionally and financially survive. But over the years, her focus has shifted slightly to educating clients and others on how to avoid the financial pitfalls that come with divorce.

“So, what keeps me interested in the practice is being able to work on complex financial issues along with being able to teach others and mentor attorneys,” she said.

In a recent case, Abrigo helped a mother whose young children, 4 and 2, were kidnapped by the other father from Mexico and brought to the United States. She said the mother and the minor children had been living in Mexico where she had exclusive custody of the children since birth. Meanwhile, the father had been absent and in the prior year, he was living in Sacramento.

“Thankfully, the father filed for a domestic violence restraining order and initiated custody proceedings in San Bernardino County,” Abrigo said. “As the mother worked in San Diego, he successfully served her, but I was able to find out when and where he was going to be at court to serve him with notice of the mother’s ex parte proceedings for emergency custody orders. That same day, the court ordered the return of the children to the mother. After that, jurisdiction was recognized as properly being in Mexico, and the parties took their action to Mexico, where the case was already opened.”

She said she has also noticed some trends in terms of professional responsibility. She has seen some lawyers use threats to prevent parties from pursuing their right to seek court intervention. Abrigo reminds her colleagues that communication with opposing counsel should be scrutinized and carefully thought out before being sent out.

“I am not a proponent of wishing sanctions upon my colleagues,” she said. “So, I hope that given the trend that I am seeing, I hope that counsel will be more willing to pick up the phone and do less posturing for their client and instead think of the big picture and get the clients on the road to settlement.”