Practice Focus
Amber Barber handles all aspects of divorce and civil union dissolution, including complex financial issues, extensive marital assets, post-judgment modifications and court order enforcement issues. Amber helps clients negotiate custody and visitation disputes, child support issues, spousal maintenance/alimony matters and property division agreements. She frequently works with complicated issues regarding business valuations, pension and retirement plans, stock portfolios and real property. Amber provides comprehensive advice about the fairness and equity of proposed settlement agreements and has considerable litigation experience. In all these areas, Amber’s goal is to help her clients obtain a resolution which is in the children’s best interests and to secure a fair and equitable resolution with regard to their financial situation.
Professional Activities
Currently, Amber is a member of the Family Law Section of the Vermont Bar Association, having served as Section chair from 2007 to 2008. She is an elected member of the VBA Board of Managers, having previously served on the board as a member of VBA's Young Lawyers Division and as past-president of that group. She is treasurer for the Chittenden County Bar Association
Amber serves as a Guardian Ad Litem for family court cases and teaches Pro Se Education classes for the family court. She recently served as a judge for the “We the People” student competition at the Vermont State House.
As a participant in the Military Family Law Pro Bono project in 2009, Amber helped to train lawyers on how to file and modify parental rights orders for deploying service members, what to include in proposed orders to provide for long-distance parenting and parent-child contact, how to consider military benefits in child-support calculations and other military-specific family law topics.
Amber also helped to draft the state’s Military Parental Rights Act and testified before the Vermont legislature about the protections the bill offers to children when a divorced parent is deployed. The comprehensive bill, which Governor Douglas called “a model” for the rest of the nation, was signed into law in March 2010.
Publications/Presentations
Amber is a frequent lecturer on all aspects of family law, including complex litigation. Recent and upcoming presentations include:
"Finance 101 for Family Law Practitioners" and "Ethics," Family Law from A to Z, National Business Institute, September 2009
Topics include: valuation and division of real estate, insurance, stock options, retirement plans and other assets; tax ramifications of divorce; petitioning for child support and child support enforcement options; drafting Qualified Domestic Relations Orders and bankruptcy
Panelist, Continuing Legal Education Program to train attorneys participating in the Military Family Law Pro Bono Project, sponsored by the Vermont Bar Association and the Vermont National Guard, July 2009
"Family Law Topics for the Tax Practitioner: Legal Separation, Alimony, Child Support, Form 8332 Child Exemption Allocation and Qualified Domestic Relations Orders," Vermont Tax Practitioners Association, Montpelier, June 2009
"Fair and Equitable Asset and Liability Division," Successful Financial Settlements for Your Divorce Client, National Business Institute, May 2009
Roadmap Through Divorce Proceedings, National Business Institute, November 2008
Family Law: Helping Your Clients through Difficult Cases, National Business Institute, March 2008
The Future of the Legal Profession: Law Office Management & Technology: What’s Next? Vermont Bar Association, October 2007
Languages
Spanish
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