ROCKVILLE, Maryland—Marjorie G. DiLima, Managing Partner of Fait & DiLima, Maryland Family Lawyers, recently joined Andrew Samalin, Principle of Samalin Wealth on his successful podcast, Lawyers Who Care.
Samalin begins the interview by asking, “Tell us what brought you to the law. Why did you become a lawyer?”
“The real truth of it is, I graduated college late,” DiLima explains. “When I did graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree, which really had no direction, my best friend at the time said, ‘You ought to go to law school.’ I replied, ‘That’s a good idea,’ so I went to law school. My friends knew I could argue and debate and things like that.”
“What did you like most about it?” Samalin asks.
“There’s a saying in law school,” DiLima replies. “The first year, they scare you to death, the second year, they work you to death and the third year, they bore you to death. What I did like about it was meeting other people going through the same thing. It was very, very difficult the first year. You start getting the process and what’s going on. The third year, you stop buying books. I still have friends from law school that I stay in touch with. It’s fun to see how their careers have gone. I liked the intellectual part of it, the thinking differently, how to look at things differently.”
“What brought you to family law?” Samalin inquires.
“I’ll be honest, in law school I never took family law. When I started, I was barred in the state of Maryland at the end of 1995. At that time, there was a mini recession and no one around me was hiring. I also had a Masters in Tax Law and was looking for tax jobs as an attorney and couldn’t find those. So, I decided to hang up my shingle by myself, and what came in the door, 80 percent was family law. I learned quickly how to handle family law and different scenarios. Seven years later, Dorothy Fait, whom I had met through attending CLEs and clients that I knew had gone to her, asked me to come on board as kind of an autonomous, working with my own clients and some of her clients. And all they did was family law. I quit doing bankruptcies, I quit doing DWIs, I quit doing all the other areas of law. Then, in 2006, I was made a Partner. It fell in my lap, I should say. I didn’t search it out.”
“You have a story about when you went above and beyond for your clients. Do you want to share that?”
“I have a couple of stories, but I’ll share one,” DiLima says. “I’ve had several clients who are so grateful and say, ‘Thank you for making my life better, ‘Thank you for standing up for me.’ I had this one client, he was a male, and I had this case for probably five or six years. In the initial case, there were two children involved, one of whom was on the autism spectrum. We got a settlement where the parties had 50-50 custody. Mom remarried to what we found out was an abuser. We pulled all of his records out of the court to see what happened with his ex-wife.
“He was abusing the kids in certain ways. We went back to court to lessen time with Mom. Then, Mom had another baby with her husband. Part of our settlement was that the stepfather couldn’t abuse them, discipline them or do anything. And he did. When it was time and we had enough information, we went back to court for sole custody. And my client wanted to move back to Florida, where he was originally from, where the parties originally lived, and where his parents were.
“Relocation cases are very hard. There was a matter of the schools in Florida, so I talked to all the different schools in Florida, and they wanted their kids in a Jewish school and I talked to all those schools. I went a little beyond, rather than just an investigator. We did have an education specialist, but to be honest, I didn’t trust him. He later became the other side’s expert when he was originally neutral.
“We actually had a Zoom trial, which is very difficult because of exhibits and things like that. We had a couple of experts and a vocational expert. We won that case big. Dad was authorized to move to Florida, Mom could only have contact with her kids in Florida. There was no order for the kids to come back here (Maryland). Stepdad was to have no contact with them. Mom was to pay child support. It was a huge win.
“During the case, my client, he was a Jewish boy, he’d say ‘Talk to my mom. My mom needs to hear that everything’s okay.’ So I talked to Mom every time we went through something to make sure everything was okay. After the case, he moved to Miami and I had to call his mom to keep reassuring her everything was okay. Then, I had a conference in Miami and he said ‘I’ve got to take you to dinner, we never had our celebration dinner.’ He almost couldn’t believe how well we did. Then, he got engaged again and invited me to his wedding. He has sent clients to me.
“I guess it’s a success story, but I went above and beyond with my research, some things attorneys don’t do as much because they rely on the experts. I kept counseling him about when the right time to file would be. We have to have enough pebbles to break the window. A couple of incidents aren’t going to break the window to file. He and his mom were really grateful for that.”
DiLima then shares another quick story about a case she had a long time ago, where the kids had asthma and their dad was not attending to the asthma. She asked their pediatrician to have dinner with her, so he could explain to DiLima what asthma was and what the negative consequences were of doing or not doing certain things. She recounts, “The doctor said, ‘I have never had an attorney ask me to explain the medical part of a kid’s problem.’ I felt like that was maybe going above and beyond, but I need to understand what’s going on so I know.”
About Fait & DiLima, Maryland Family Lawyers
Our mission at Fait & DiLima, Maryland Family Lawyers is to provide excellent service to our clients as they go through difficult times in their lives. Our family law attorneys have over 100 years of combined legal experience and have received numerous accolades and awards for their work in family law. Our clients are successful because we combine our extensive legal experience with a client-centered approach that recognizes family law matters’ deeply personal and sensitive nature. We believe that advocating for our clients while navigating the emotional aspects of any family law case is just as important as achieving a favorable legal result. We move mountains for our clients so they are able to scale up to a better life.
We represent clients in Montgomery and Frederick Counties and throughout Maryland. Attorneys Dorothy Fait and Sylvia Borenstein are also licensed in the District of Columbia. Call our law office today at (301) 251-0100 to learn more about how we can assist you.
