Kathleen “Casey” Copps DiPaola, Esq.

Pronouns: “She/Her/Hers”

Partner

Email: KDipaola@theCDSLawFirm.com

Primary Practice Areas:

Casey was previously an associate attorney at Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP, Albany’s largest law firm. Casey then joined her mother, Anne Reynolds Copps, in practice as an associate with the firm in 2012 and became Anne’s partner in 2014, creating Copps DiPaola, PLLC, the first mother-daughter law firm in the Capital Region. In 2018, Lorraine Silverman joined the firm as a partner and the firm name changed to its current name.

Casey focuses her practice in all areas of family formation, including adoption law, assisted reproduction technology law and surrogacy law. Many of her clients come to her when they are first exploring options for growing their family and she is able to talk them through the option of adoptions, assisted reproduction and surrogacy and explore which might be the best fit given their situation.

She has experience representing birth parents and adoptive parents in private adoptions, voluntary agency adoptions, foster care adoptions, step/second parent adoptions and kinship guardianship proceedings. Casey also has experience representing adoption agencies and handling adoption subsidy fair hearings.

Casey also has over a decade of experience representing donors and intended parents in egg donation, sperm donation and embryo donation cases and can also assist her clients with parentage proceedings that confirm their parental rights when they use assisted reproduction to conceive their child. Casey also has extensive experience representing surrogates and intended parents in agency surrogacy matches and independent surrogacy matches. Her services includes drafting surrogacy agreements and filing the parantage proceeding during the surrogate pregnancy.

Casey is currently the President of New York Attorneys for Adoption & Family Formation and a Fellow of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys. She has taken an active role in advocating for legislation that will improve the lives of her clients in the realms of adoption and assisted reproduction. Specifically, she was a tireless advocate for the Child Parent Security Act, which was passed in April 2020 and now permits compensated surrogacy in New York, allows for a parentage proceeding in lieu of a step-parent adoption for same-sex female couples and provides various other protections for families created through assisted reproduction.

Casey is also the co-founder of New York Surrogacy Center, the first surrogacy matching program to be licensed by the New York State Department of Health.

Casey has been a frequent lecturer in the areas of adoption, assisted reproduction and surrogacy to judges, attorneys and fertility clinics. She also often speaks on the intersection of these areas and estate planning.

Casey also practices in the areas of estate planning/trusts and probate/estate administration. Estate planning is important for those who are starting a family and particularly for those using assisted reproduction, so Casey’s expertise in both family building and estate planning allows her clients to have comprehensive representation in these matters without involving multiple attorneys.

Casey understands that many of her clients come to her during difficult and stressful times in their lives. She strives to educate her clients on the law and their options so they can make educated decisions about the trajectory of their cases. Casey understands that, while the matter that brings her clients to her are incredibly important to them, the vast majority of her clients have limited funds to spend on legal representation. With that in mind, Casey openly discusses with her clients the relative costs of various options and helps them to engage in a cost-benefit analysis.

Casey prides herself on being a creative problem solver and refuses to take a one size fits all approach to her cases. She spends time with her clients getting to know the facts of their cases intimately so she can help them brainstorm possible solutions to the problem that brought them to her. Particularly in matters involving families, Casey believes that working together to come up with a solution that addresses the needs and concerns of all involved to the best extent possible is almost always preferable to litigation, which can do irreparable damage to relationships. That being said, Casey has extensive litigation experience and, in the event that settlement is not an option, she is willing and able to zealously litigate on behalf of her clients.

Casey regularly practices in the Capital District and surrounding counties, including Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Saratoga, Columbia, and Schoharie. Casey also routinely travels as far north as Plattsburgh, as far south as Kingston, and as far west as Syracuse to represent birth and adoptive parents in adoptions. Casey also practices throughout New York State for assisted reproduction matters (egg/sperm/embryo donation agreements, surrogacy agreements and parentage proceedings) because these do not typically require court appearances. Casey is also admitted in Vermont and New Jersey where she practices exclusively in surrogacy, and assisted reproductive technology law.

Casey lives in Clifton Park with her husband, Jeffrey, a high school special education teacher, and their children, Evan and Emily.