Carolyn Helwick, CFLS

Carrie is a trial lawyer with extensive experience in complex, high stakes litigation.  She has practiced family law exclusively since 2008. She is a Certified Family Law Specialist, by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.

In her practice, Carrie serves a broad spectrum of clients including corporate executives, business owners, entrepreneurs, attorneys, and full-time parents.  Carrie helps her clients navigate a complicated court process, developing a strategy, and leveraging experts as needed for complex financial and custody matters.  

Carrie is respected and well-known within the local bench, bar, and community, which enables her to command better results for her clients.  She founded Helwick Family Law to provide her clients with the highest caliber of effective and efficient representation.  

Helwick Family Law sets itself apart from other family law firms in the unmatched quality of work, high level of expertise, and depth of experience.  The firm has experience in cases with a wide variety of assets and income, including all types of real and personal property as well as employment-based equity such as restricted stock and stock options, and more specialized and unique investments.  Helwick Family Law demonstrates expertise handling all kinds of child custody and visitation matters, ranging from simple to the most complex.

Helwick Family Law works closely with its clients to help them navigate what can be a complicated process related to the dissolution of marriage, legal separation, and child custody and visitation.  The firm offers services for clients every step of the way, from pre-planning consultation, through filing, judgment, and post-judgment matters.  As a result, clients are better able to manage and understand the legal process, yielding a more positive outcome for the entire family.  

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Practice Areas

• Marital and domestic partnership dissolutions (divorce)

• Paternity actions (unmarried parents)

• Child custody and visitation

• Child and spousal support

• Identification, characterization, and division of assets and debts

• Restraining orders

• Modification and enforcement of existing orders and judgments

• Consultation for mediation or settlement negotiations

• Marital settlement agreements

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Representative Matters

• Successfully negotiated the dissolution of marital estates consisting of complex private and public investments, including venture capital partnership interests.

• Obtained equalization of community interest in multiple business entities and division of assets, as well as a lump-sum buyout of spousal support more than a decade post-separation.

• Resolved custody and visitation matters that had been in active litigation for years, obtaining additional parenting time, and leveraging alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and the use of sanctions to keep the parties out of court in the future.

• Coached a client through a move-away custody evaluation resulting in favorable recommendations against the other parent’s request to move out-of-state with the parties’ preschool-age child.

• Obtained an order lifting a temporary restraining order prohibiting contact with the parties’ young children, transitioning into an equal timeshare within a month.

• Successfully traced a decade-old, separate property claim, and obtained repayment of significant community funds siphoned out of joint bank accounts into an account held in the name of a third party.

• Tried and secured substantial separate property and termination of long-term spousal support in a case involving a marital dissolution action and a civil Marvin lawsuit related to pre-marital cohabitation.

• Achieved a substantial upward modification of child support based on the executive payor's stock awards and other non-cash compensation.

• Established a permanent guardianship amidst a tri-state jurisdictional dispute.

Awards and Honors

Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rated

Selected to Northern California Super Lawyers

Member of award-winning team “The Best in Family Law,” The Recorder

Fellow, The Tony Patiño Fellowship

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Admissions

State Bar of California

U.S. District Court, Northern District of California

Education

J.D., University of California, Hastings College of Law (Family Law Concentration)

B.A., cum laude, University of California, Los Angeles

Professional and Community Contributions

Judge Pro Tem for Santa Clara County Family Justice Center

Previously facilitated Early Neutral Evaluations and court-appointed arbitrations

​Prior Co-chair of the Women Lawyers Section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association and Local Affiliate to the California Women Lawyers state organization

Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for Child Advocates of San Mateo

Former Member of Junior League of San Jose