Tamara A. Marshall, Partner

An Attorney with Zanck, Coen, Wright & Saladin since 2006, Tamara Marshall, became a partner in 2013, and is a dynamic part of this firm’s legal team. Tamara focuses her practice on Longevity and Estate planning, including proactive planning to qualify for Medicaid for long term care, and Veterans Pension benefits. Tamara believes that everyone 18 and over should have an estate plan (it isn’t just something for the wealthy) which include powers of attorney to designate and agent for yourself if you are living and unable to make your decisions. Tamara also enjoys helping relieve the burden on families with loved ones in need of long-term care by helping them plan at least 5 years in advance and avoid the need to drain lifelong savings to qualify for Medicaid assistance. Tamara believes that seniors who have saved responsibly all their lives and had no way to predict the soaring cost of long-term care, should not have to impoverish themselves before qualifying for assistance to pay for their long-term care needs.

Tamara also practices “alternative” family law. In July of 2015 Tamara chose a new path for her family law practice by eliminating litigation services and focusing exclusively on more empowering and less destructive options for her family law clients. She strongly believes that many couples, even those with a high level of conflict in their relationship, would choose, given the option, to end their relationship in a manner that allows them to retain control of their parenting and personal decisions, and minimizes costs and uncertainty. To provide such options Tamara became trained as a mediator in 2007 and became a Collaborative Divorce Law practitioner in 2009.

Before becoming an Associate at Zanck, Coen, Wright & Saladin, Tamara was an Assistant Public Defender for Lake County, IL and, before that, a flight attendant for American Airlines. While attending the Northern Illinois University College of Law, she served as Lead Articles Editor for Law Review. After graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2002 Tamara was admitted to Illinois Bar the same year.

She and her husband Ed met skydiving — a hobby they both since have given up. They have one fur kid, their beloved rescued senior 14 ½ year old rescue Puggle named Buddy who they adopted in 2014.

In her spare time, Tamara enjoys riding her Peloton and is a member of the #PowerZonePack. She also practices yoga and a 200-hour yoga instructor course. She crochets blankets as gifts for special life events of friends, family and colleagues and gardening is also one of her enjoyed recreations. Tamara grew up in Southern California. In response to the frequently asked question “Why do you live in Illinois?” Tamara repeats that she missed the people, fireflies, and thunderstorms of the Midwest when she briefly returned to California, and has lived in Illinois since 1991

 

AREAS OF PRACTICE

 

 

MEMBER ASSOCIATIONS

U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois

McHenry County Bar Association

International Academy of Collaborative Professionals

Collaborative Divorce Illinois

Member, National Association of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA)

   

 

RECENT VIDEO BLOG ARTICLES

On Taking the High Road, Divorce and Avoiding Litigation
Except: Ms. Marshall: “The reason I have chosen to eliminate litigation from my family law practice is because of the harmful effect it has on children and the children have no choice in what’s going on and they are very often the most impacted by the divorce process…”
The Downside of Litigation, Adversarial Divorce
Excerpt: Ms. Marshall: “Considering whether they should do an adversarial or nonadversarial process, I like to give them an example of how, court, the adversarial process, is often times not very helpful at all…”
What Are My Legal Rights In Divorce?
Excerpt: Ms. Marshall: “…I think once we get into the process of answering these questions about what their rights are, it really is more: how are things going to look when her family takes a different form? So I think they realize that they are well-equipped and well enough informed to make these decisions so that it becomes more questions of what’s best for me and my family as opposed to, “what are my rights?””
What is a Non-Adversarial Divorce?
Excerpt: Ms. Marshall: “The court system is an adversarial process. It’s designed to create winners and losers, black and white; that’s good for business because you need certainty but it’s not good for families.”
How much will it cost to get divorced?
Excerpt: Ms. Marshall “I think that if the divorcing couple can at least agree that they don’t want to give a substantial amount of money to an attorney or attorneys, if they can agree on that then they shouldn’t go to court and litigate.”
Divorce, How Much Money Do I Get?
Excerpt: Ms. Marshall: “Another really common concern obviously when people are going through divorce is finances.They have a lot of questions about: am I going to get child support? Am I going to have to pay child support? Am I going to receive maintenance, spousal support or whatever it is you want to call it or am I going to have to pay that?….”
How Long Will It Take to Get Divorced?
Excerpt: Ms. Marshall “Sometimes one person is further along emotionally in the ending of the relationship than the other person and that might delay things because it’s harder for them to make decisions or just to get going and do the things that we need to do to gather information and move forward so it depends a lot on the emotions of the parties…”