LINDA J. LARKIN was born in Dallas Texas, and grew up there, in San Francisco, California, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She completed her B.A. at the University of Wisconsin where she was President of the Wisconsin Student Association from 1972-1973. She moved to McMinnville, Oregon, later in 1973 and moved to the Portland area in 1975. Ms. Larkin graduated from The Lewis and Clark Law School in 1979, where she was a member of Moot Court. Since law school, Ms. Larkin served as President of the Domestic Violence Resource Center, in Hillsboro, Oregon, and was a member of the statewide Domestic Violence Advisory Committee. She is active in her church, Westminster Presbyterian, and in her children's school.

Areas of Practice

Trust Fund Litigation -- Linda regularly practices in federal court representing multi-employer Trust Funds in the collection of contributions due employee benefits and in enforcing employee benefit fund rights. In December 2004 she spoke at the 50th Anniversary of the Annual Employee Benefits Conference on “Collecting Delinquent Contributions,” in New Orleans.

Family Law Litigation -- The other half of Linda's practice focuses on family law and end-of-life planning, including dissolutions, modifications, adoptions, wills, Advance Directives and Powers of Attorney. She has spoken to members of the Family Law Section of the Oregon State Bar on domestic violence issues at several of their annual conferences. Linda provides a first-time consultation for Dissolution of up to two hours for $150.

Significant Cases

Trust Find Litigation
Linda briefed the successful audit case Northwest Administrators, Inc. v Albertson's, Inc., 104 F. 3rd 253 (9th Cir. 1996) on behalf of the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust. The Trust was awarded over $100,000 in past due contributions revealed under an audit to be due based upon employees mileage.

Trust Find Litigation
Linda regularly negotiates work-out agreements by which multi-employer funds can cooperate with employers in arranging for payment of contributions with the goal of keeping the union employer in business and fully funding all employee benefit funds and accounts.

Domestic Relations
In domestic relations cases, Linda has both obtained orders requiring supervised parenting time and modifying such orders as they arise in domestic violence cases. An advocate of mediated resolution of domestic relations issues, she realizes that not all cases lend themselves to settlement. She litigates spousal support and custody issues.

Domestic Relations
In 1989, she was successful in Kernan and Kernan, 97 Or. App. 362 (1989), in obtaining spousal support, in addition to one-half of pension benefits.

Domestic Relations
She has recently (2005) obtained rights for a father to travel with his children to Nigeria, to visit father's family home, over mother's objections arising from the uncertainty associated with international travel and concerns about his return to Oregon with the children.

Domestic Relations
She has recently (2005) obtained rights for a father to travel with his children to Nigeria, to visit father's family home, over mother's objections arising from the uncertainty associated with international travel and concerns about his return to Oregon with the children.

Collaborative Law

For everyone who is hoping to get out of their marriage without huge legal bills, and or a down and dirty, ‘L.A. Law’ style divorce, lawyers, mental health professionals and mediators have developed a cooperative process by which the parties may exchange information, obtain professional advice, and work together to maximize the financial and emotional benefits to all concerned following a divorce.

How Does it Work?
Parties begin by committing in writing to resolving the dissolution issues (parenting time, residence, child support, property division, spousal support) without going to court. Each agrees to open exchange of information and to provide all necessary documentation timely and without the necessity of subpoenas or depositions.

The attorneys agree to provide a safe environment and enlist mental health professionals, accountants, financial planners, and mediators to guide the parties through the process and without duplication of costs. Each attorney remains independent and provides his or her client with advice to insure a fair outcome, but with an eye to keeping the playing field level, and insure that both parties arrive at the end of the process believing that they and their children have the best possible result for the entire family.

Mental health professionals (counselors, psychologists, social workers) are engaged to help the parties prepare emotionally for the dissolution process and understand the impact of the process (and the party's goals or expectations) on themselves, the other party and the children. Whether called coaches or facilitators, the parties and their children are offered communication skills designed to work after separation and divorce.

Why Does it Work?
The parties agree at the outset to take responsibility for the outcome rather than operate within the current model which leaves the outcome up to the attorneys and court system when agreements cannot be reached.

Financial costs do not go towards motions, depositions, subpoenas and hearings, but towards financial planning assistance, tax advice, counseling for the parties and the children (where helpful).

The parties agree to work towards their mutual financial goals and can work outside the standard legal framework. The courts and the legislature's model of divorce becomes just one option among many to insure both parties' continued financial success and the children's emotionally healthy transition to two single parent homes, or blended families.

Bennett Hartman attorney Linda J. Larkin is taking her twenty-five plus years of experience in domestic relations to Collaborative Law trainings and working with other professionals to explore the process. She looks forward to working with clients who want to minimize the hostility and conflict often associated with dissolution and try the Collaborative Law method of ending a marriage and beginning a new life after divorce.