Melanie A. Snider, Family Law Attorney

Always a leader in creating policy that benefits families, Melanie has been involved in a wide variety of advocacy efforts. She worked to feed the homeless and less fortunate while she was in law school, has been an ardent support of women's rights, and worked tirelessly on national and state policy involving child support. Currently, she is involved in a movement to reform the child welfare system.

Melanie is a McGeorge School of Law graduate, and holds a Juris Doctor degree as well as a Certificate in Government Affairs. She was active in promoting Public Interest law at McGeorge, and was the first woman as well as the first person not acting as Student Body President to receive the prestigious "Outstanding Student Service Award" upon graduation. She created the "Job Fair" that continues on the campus today. She chaired the Holiday Food Basket program, raising enough funds to feed more than 300 families for Thanksgiving of 1997. During law school, Melanie also served as a legislative intern for the National Organization for Women. It was when she worked with NOW that she became interested in family law. Investigation of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) with the NOW Family Law Task force opened her eyes to the many abuses that families suffer at the hands of the family law courts, within the child support system, and in the child welfare system.

Melanie also devotes time to ending homelessness, or more particularly, assuring the existence of affordable housing for local families. Serving her fifth year on the Board of Directors (and second as Vice President) for Community Housing Opportunities Corporation, Melanie has helped to assure that more and more families in Northern California find housing that is affordable and safe. CHOC is a leader in building and renovating housing for low and middle income families. CHOC has many unique programs that ensure the organization remains involved in the properties well beyond opening and lease up. In addition to helping families access well-kept affordable housing, CHOC offers programs like Resident Services providing families in crisis with extra assistance. After school programs, summer lunch programs, and programs like the "food closet" are just a few of the special programs supplied by CHOC's Resident Services.

During and after law school, Melanie worked for a national non-profit organization that advocated for changes in the child support system. She became the executive director of the organization. Melanie has appeared on national television, at Capitol Hill, at the White House and in California's legislature to advocate for changes in the child support organization. She was successful in helping California to re-create the child support system and was the one advocate that remained after the legislative victory to work daily on the creation of policies and practices to be adopted by the new Department of Child Support Services.

Now Melanie has decided that she wants to help individual families maneuver the legal system. Services offered by The Law Offices of Melanie Snider, Esq. are personally tailored to the needs of the individual families. There are pre-mediation assistance services as well as the typical legal services offered by other law firms. Melanie will take the time to make sure that your family understands what is happening in court and what choices families can make to help get past the trauma that occurs during and after dissolution. She has extraordinary knowledge of the child support system, and can help parents to understand how the child support system works. There are many parents who have problems with child support-either because of some bureaucratic error or because of a change in circumstances that warrants a reappearance in court and a readjustment of child support to a fair amount.

She helps families with other legal issues also-divorce, annulment, child custody, property division, adoption, juvenile dependency, and grandparents' rights. Whatever you family's legal needs might be-give Melanie a call, she will fight for your family!

Melanie A. Snider, Esq.
1111 Howe Ave., Ste. 555
Sacramento, CA 95825
Phone: 916-447-7681 Fax: 916-447-7683.