What This Practice Is About

As an attorney practicing in Georgia for more than thirty-three years, Lynn M. Swank has accumlated a vast array of knowledge and experience. Her areas of expertise include adoption, estate planning, probate, guardianship, disruption, general business, custody, divorce and other family law issues. She has special concerns regarding legal issues relating to the elderly and those with special needs. Having a child who has fought and survived recurrent cancer and a bone marrow transplant, she has extensive experience in dealing with legal, medical, insurance, educational, and related issues arising from chronic disease and disability. However, Mrs. Swank does NOT handle criminal defense, personal injury cases, products liability matters, or debtor issues in bankruptcy work.

A frequent instructor in seminars and training classes for SCORE (a service organization affiliated with the Small Business Administration), local colleges, and adoption information services, Lynn Swank routinely interacts with novel and creative ’real-world’ issues. She has taught educational programs at Clayton College and State University, Oglethorpe University, Kennesaw State University, and Emory University in the small business field and in training programs to certify individuals in careers as paralegal assistants. She has for a number of years presented classes in the area of adoption for Professional Development Network, Medical Educational Services, National Business Institute, Institute of Continual Legal Education (GA), Resolve (a national not-for-profit organization dealing with infertility, adoption, and parenting alternatives) and a convention of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys.

During her career thus far, Lynn Swank has been retained to provide legal services in more than 4,700 adoption cases. Those situations have ranged from

	private, ‘independent’ placements,
	placements made though licensed child placing agencies,
	placements which occurred through foster care, the Courts, and welfare departments,
	international adoptions and custody transfers,
	Interstate Compact transfers of children,
	single parent adoptions,
	adoptions of special needs children and those in terminal medical status;
	surrogacies (gestational and co-parented),
	assisted reproductive technology issues, including donation of embryo, ova and sperm,
	litigation of Native American tribal rights in adoption,
	contested adoptions, legitimations and challenges by biological fathers or paternal claimants,
	grandparent adoptive, visitation and custody cases, and
	adoptions by relatives or step-parents.
	Interstate abductions of children by non-custodial and non-permitted parents or relatives.
	Parental Alienation Syndrome Issues
	Disruption of adoptions
	Wrongful adoption

She has been instrumental in reunification of adopted persons with their biological or cultural families and in mediation of rights in open adoption cases where the parties developed later-life conflicts. Services are provided for search, reunion and discreet communications with birth parents and other persons in sensitive situations.

Please examine other portions of this website to review some materials relating to topics of special interest in this law practice.

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