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Chelsea Update focus on business: Chelsea Family Law

Even as a child Susan V. Brown (dba Chelsea Family Law)  knew she wanted to practice law.

“I was interested in history. I was a big reader and loved to read historically-based books. I guess that cultivated my interest in our system of government and our system of law.” she said.

“Combine that interest with growing up in the 60’s and 70’s – the assassinations of Martin Luther King and two months later Bobby Kennedy, the social inequality and resulting riots that ripped apart my city, listening to the Vietnam War draft lottery on the radio with my older sister’s friends and crying with the high school seniors who had low numbers – and I suppose the desire to participate in the system was pre-ordained, maybe as a way to effectuate change,” she said.

At age 20, she had the opportunity to attend Alma College and majored in history. As the first person in her family to attend college, she describes herself as ‘pretty unprepared’ academically for the experience. After graduation, she pursued her law degree at the University of Detroit Mercy, exiting with a Juris Doctor degree. “When I entered my first year of law school in 1981, 50 percent of the class was women.  That was a first, and I remember that we all felt it was an important moment,” she said.

Brown’s life experiences helped shape many of her career and personal values along the way. There was a 10-month solo backpack trip through Europe after law school ($5 a day, sleeping in train stations and eating baguettes was appealing to her back then).

In addition, she was part of a grass roots effort to save Tiger Stadium as a member of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club, helped organize the east-metro Detroit Million Mom March coalition (to prevent gun violence) in 2000.

A private law practice in Grosse Pointe, and a one-year teaching fellowship at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France are highlights along the journey that brought her to Chelsea.

Brown moved her family to Chelsea in 2005, and a year later opened her law office in the Sylvan Building at 114 N. Main St. She appears in cases in the Washtenaw, Jackson and Livingston Circuit Courts.

“When I opened my Chelsea office I decided to devote my practice to the area of law that gave me the highest degree of satisfaction, — family law,” she said.

Brown represents both women and men who are parties to disputes involving divorce, custody and parenting-time, child and spousal support, parental relocation, property distribution, enforcement of Judgments and Orders, paternity, separate maintenance and pre-nuptial agreements.

Brown is a trained Mediator as well as a litigator and is regularly hired by other family law attorneys to act as Mediator on their cases.

“The concerns of the family can be the most difficult to resolve, both emotionally and legally,” she said, adding, “How successful a person or family navigates the perilous waters of divorce is often dependent on the quality of assistance they received during the process.”

“Going to court may yield the least optimal result,” she said. “It is expensive, it is a public airing of a dispute, it tends to exacerbate the wedge between the two parties, and places the decision-making ability in the hands of a third party (the judge).”

“Moving to Chelsea was a decision I have never regretted,” she said. “I get back to the city often, maintain my DIA membership and buy lots of Tiger tickets, but I appreciate the life my children had growing up in Chelsea and their experiences in Chelsea schools.”

Brown said she learned that being a citizen of a small town requires participation – especially if you want to live in a vibrant town like Chelsea – and so she joined the Chelsea Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce and served a term on the Chelsea District Library Board of Trustees.

Although much of that activity would have been outside her comfort zone prior to moving to Chelsea, Brown said, “I have learned through the example of others in this town that we all have to step-up and serve.”

Brown is the mother of Abigail Brown, a 2010 CHS graduate, and Amelia Brown, a 2012 CHS graduate.

Abigail Brown and grandson Aiden reside in Salt Lake City and daughter Amelia Brown lives in Seattle.

“When I whine to my kids about the fact that they live so far away, they remind me that I instilled in them an appreciation for travel.  And they’re right,” she said,

So now she travels to them.

You can reach Susan Brown at [email protected], 734-475-5800 and 114 N. Main St., Suite 7, in the Sylvan Building.

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