Francesca O’Cathain

Francesca O’Cathain, Partner, Family Law

fmo@olgnj.com

Francesca O’Cathain is managing partner of the divorce, matrimonial, and family law practice at the O’Cathain Law Group. 
 
Francesca’s clients have included celebrities, professional athletes, investors, business tycoons, hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners. And she has also represented clients who are married to people with those careers. She is one of the few family lawyers in New Jersey who has taken these high-end income/asset cases all the way to trial. 
 
Along with high end divorce cases, she handles custody and relocation cases, and has marked out a niche in handling divorces that involve kids with special needs. She frequently lectures to other lawyers and judges in New Jersey and nationwide about divorces where one or more children from the marriage has a special need. 
 
Francesca is known in the Bergen County law enforcement community for handling the divorces of cops. She is familiar with the unique circumstances of their finances, especially their pensions and retirement benefits.
 
With her experience, she was board certified by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a family lawyer. (Approximately 3% of New Jersey lawyers are board certified.) She is also one of only approximately 45 New Jersey family lawyers who is admitted as a member of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. She is Secretary of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. She has lectured with the American Bar Association on family law, and is a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association. 
 
She is Of Counsel to the prominent New York law firm of Berkman, Bottger, Newman & Schein. 
 
Francesca grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, in a family of lawyers, where she was one of five children. In the fall of 1997, Francesca flew to Los Angeles, California where she began her undergraduate degree at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. Though tempted by the climate to stay, she returned to the northeast and graduated with her Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Connecticut in 2004. That fall, she followed in her mother’s footsteps and started practicing family law in New Jersey. 
 
Firmly rooted in Bergen County, Francesca now lives in Hillsdale, New Jersey, with her husband and three children. She is always happy to share that her three children came to her through either adoption or infertility treatment. And her office is generously decorated with photos of them – mostly from their pre-teen years! The challenges of building her own family, and herself being a child of a second marriage, has given her the belief that coming through difficult times can lead to wonderful new beginnings.
 
She is available for an in-person or virtual consultation to discuss the best divorce options for you and your family.