Anna Christopher
Family Court Lawyer, Divorce Mediator, Divorce Coach
Anna Christopher is a Family Court Lawyer, Divorce Coach, and Divorce Mediator at Best Foot Forward. Having navigated her own custody challenges, she understands the legal hurdles firsthand and is dedicated to helping clients secure victories in their custody battles. After starting her career in law and real estate, Anna returned to her true passion—guiding families through the complexities of family court. With a background in political science and law, she is now pursuing certification as a Children and Family Investigator (CFI) to further support children in legal disputes.
Achara Tarfa
Trauma Trained Level 3 IFS Practitioner
With over 25 years of experience in leadership, mentorship and communication disorders, Achara uses compassionate coaching for complex trauma to support survivors of sexual abuse, cultural trauma, racial trauma, religious trauma, narcissistic abuse, domestic violence, and high-conflict divorce. She is also dedicated to helping clients with ADHD and high conflict coparents of children with ADHD understand executive functioning skills and the neurological, physical, and emotional aftereffects of trauma. As a sexual abuse, dometic violence, and narcissistic abuse trauma survivor herself, using her education, unique skills of courage and resilience, and lived experience, she is able to provide safe spaces for her clients to be seen and heard in order to develop secure attachments within themselves and in relationships.
Caitlin Hanley
Client Liaison
A passionate and dedicated individual with a background in coaching, child development, children’s media, and global human geography, Caitlin has always had a heart for helping others and for making change. The transformative experience of becoming a mother to her 6 year old daughter, and her own journey of leaving an abusive relationship and navigating the family court system, ignited a newfound dedication to feminism and championing the rights of women and children in particular.
Marisa Messer
Client Liaison
Marisa Messer is a dedicated mother of five who has personally experienced the challenges of a high-conflict custody battle. Through that journey, she came to understand the devastating effects of Parental Alienation on children and families, fueling her passion for supporting others in similar situations. Beyond her work with Best Foot Forward, Marisa owns a holistic health store, helping clients find natural solutions for their well-being. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, kayaking, and chasing her goats around her small farm.
Most of us feel paralyzed when we have to go to court for child custody.
There is so much we don’t know that we want to know right away, to try to get control of our new situation:
There is so much we don’t know that we want to know right away, to try to get control of our new situation:
How long will the custody case go on?
How much money is this going to cost?
Will the kids be negatively affected by this custody battle?
It makes sense that it’s hard. There is a lot to think about.
It’s COSTLY.
It’s RISKY.
It’s ANXIETY-PROVOKING.
Your child needs protection, or you would not have gotten this far. You would have simply hammered out a parenting agreement with your co-parent.
Or you would have gone to mediation or used lawyers to finalize an agreement between you.
Hopefully, the furthest you’d go is to file a petition in family court, and then an appearance or two would propel your co-parent toward forming a settlement agreement with you.
But that’s not what’s happened.
What you need to do now is present yourself to the court in a way which showcases your strengths as a parent.
Often you must fight to show your truth and show your co-parent’s truth. Your lawyer can help you prepare up to a point, but your legal fees are best spent on their legal advice and court representation; you can save thousands of dollars by organizing the evidence yourself, and we can help you.
The amount of information and evidence you need to present can be confusing, misleading, and overwhelming, for both you to gather and present and for the evaluator to understand and be convinced of. But you can do so–triumphantly–through honesty, strategy, and courage.
Know what you need to do to succeed before you go to family court.
As someone who has been through my own forensics evaluation in a custody battle, I used my years of expertise and quick understanding and assessment to create a superbly organized body of evidence, using categorized templates to provide documentation which helped the court get a clear picture of the tenor of the co-parenting relationship I was in.
These templates went on to become widely requested and used by others, and my advice and the story of my experience soon became of help to scared, hopeless parents…creating confident, prepared noble warriors!
20+
Years
10+
Years
20
Years
Certified Domestic Violence Advocate
Divorce Mediator
Parent Coordinator