Foster Hsu Family Law: Kara and Lydia Built the Firm They Wished Existed. Bay Area Families Are Better for It.
Interview by Heather Anderson
Kara Foster and Lydia Hsu did not set out to become partners. They met at a small firm years ago, working their way up from the bottom -- law clerks making copies, answering phones, sitting in on consults -- and somewhere along the way realized they shared not just a philosophy about family law but a vision for what a firm could actually feel like to work in. Today Foster Hsu Family Law is an all-female boutique practice in Santa Clara County serving Bay Area families through divorce, custody, prenuptial agreements, adoptions, and a range of specialty matters most people do not know family law attorneys handle at all. Both Kara and Lydia are Certified Family Law Specialists, a designation the State Bar of California grants to very few. They also happen to vacation together, have kids the same age, and communicate with each other better than their own spouses. This is that kind of firm.
Family law is one of the most emotionally charged areas of law there is. What drew each of you to it -- and what keeps you doing it?
Kara: I have always just wanted to help people. Family law lets me do that through a process that is genuinely hard for everyone involved, and get them out the other side. There is also always something new. Every family is different. Every financial situation is different. No two cases are ever the same and the law is constantly evolving.
Lydia: I fell into it. It was never my plan. But I was lucky to work early in my career under a family law attorney who was so passionate about it that it was impossible not to be affected by that passion. He did it because he cared about people, he cared about children, and he wanted to understand the psychology of why people react the way they do. That carried into everything I do now. I am a people person. I do not want to work with a corporation where I never know who the client is. I want the decisions we are making each day to matter to an actual human being, on issues that need to be resolved -- not over 20 years, but now. Where your kids live. What your holidays look like. What your financial future is. We have a big hand in that.
You are both Certified Family Law Specialists -- a designation the State Bar of California grants only to attorneys who meet rigorous standards of expertise and experience. What does that actually mean for someone sitting across from you in a consult?
When you pass the California bar exam, you are tested on a broad sweep of law -- civil code, evidence, criminal law, all of it. The Certified Family Law Specialist designation is different. It requires a separate full-day exam focused solely on family law, a minimum number of years actively practicing in the field, peer and judicial recommendations, a verified record of trials and hearings completed, and ongoing continuing education that goes above and beyond what is required of a standard attorney. You have to recertify every five years, certify that you have no sanctions or professional negligence cases against you, and demonstrate that family law is still your primary practice.
There is actually a funny irony in getting certified. One of the requirements is completing a certain number of trials, and we are extremely settlement-oriented. Our goal is to keep people out of court. So we were sometimes working against our own credentialing because we were too good at avoiding trial. But we got there, and we keep it up because we believe it matters. It is not that great attorneys do not exist without this designation. It is that this one demonstrates an ongoing commitment to being excellent and improving the practice of family law.
You built an all-female firm with a deeply intentional culture -- everyone on the team vets new hires, no emails after 5pm, genuine friendships across the whole staff. What were you trying to create, and why did it matter so much?
Lydia: I wanted to build the firm I wished I was working in when I was a young associate. That is the simplest answer. I also wanted to work somewhere I actually enjoy being. It does not make sense to me to build a firm that mirrors how a lot of firms are structured when that is not what I would want for myself.
Kara: We are still very active attorneys. We are not just bringing in cases and handing them off. We tag team on projects with our associates. We are in constant communication with all of our people. Having a culture where we want to show up keeps us showing up -- as much as it brings in people we actually want to work with. We spend more time with our team than with our own families in a given week. Why would you not make that environment one you enjoy?
We also both worked our way up from the very bottom. Kara was making copies and taking intake calls as a law clerk. Lydia was a legal assistant before she ever got to law school. We know what every role in this office feels like from the inside, and that changes how you treat people.
A lot of people assume they need to go to court to resolve a family law matter. When is litigation actually necessary, and when is something else a better path?
Kara: Court is only truly necessary when there is a dispute the parties cannot resolve on their own. A divorce can be completed entirely on paper without either party ever stepping into a courtroom. If people can agree, they never have to appear anywhere. But when they cannot agree between themselves, we try to do everything we can before we get Court. Phone calls with opposing counsel. Attorney-assisted negotiation. Drafting stipulations outside of court. My entire first half of a recent day was friendly calls with opposing attorneys working things out -- and that keeps everyone calmer, because the moment you file a motion and ask the court for the moon, the other side gets defensive and settlement gets harder.
Lydia: And there is a whole other path that people do not know about. It is not just litigation versus mediation. There is attorney-assisted mediation, where an attorney is present and advocating for their client through the process. There are settlements reached entirely between attorneys, even if there is no mediator involved. The range of options is much wider than most people realize.
Mediation works best when both parties want to work together, are being transparent, and where there is not a significant power imbalance. If one person has all the financial information and is unwilling to share it, or there is active deception, mediation is probably not the right path. But mediation also has a quality that court does not: the parties can decide to do something completely different from what a judge would order, if both parties want that. A judge is bound by California law. Two people who can reach an agreement are not. That flexibility can matter enormously for families with kids and complicated lives.
One more thing worth knowing: going to trial is draining in every direction. Financially, emotionally, on your time with your family or at work. Sometimes we settle the morning of trial or even in the middle of a trial. Settlement is always on the table until a judge makes an order.
“A good partnership, like a good marriage, is built on communication and the willingness to have the uncomfortable conversations.”
You mentioned that when people get married in California, they are already signing a contract -- whether they know it or not. What does that mean?
Kara: When you sign a marriage certificate, you are signing a legally binding contract. The California Family Code has already written all the rules -- what you are responsible for, what you are entitled to, how assets are divided if the marriage ends. You are agreeing to all of it whether you have read it or not.
A prenuptial agreement is not a sign that you are planning to divorce. It is an opportunity to read the contract before you sign it, and to modify the parts that do not work for your situation. We like to call it a road map for your marriage. You are having the hard conversations ahead of time -- about money, about debt, about expectations -- so you are not having them for the first time in a crisis. Honestly, couples who go through that process often come out of it with better communication than they went in with, because they have actually talked about the things most couples avoid until it is too late.
This applies to domestic partnerships registered with the State of California too. Those are treated essentially the same as marriage under California law. Community property, the Family Code, all of it.
You handle some specialty matters most people do not know family law attorneys do -- stepparent adoptions, guardianships, adult adoptions, and name changes including gender-affirming ones. Can you walk us through some of those?
Lydia: Stepparent adoptions happen when a non-biological parent who has been married to their partner -- typically for at least a year in Santa Clara County -- wants to legally adopt their spouse's minor children. In California, you can terminate the other biological parent's rights, or you do not have to. The court can actually order three legal parents if it is in the child's best interest. At the end of that process, the stepparent is a full legal parent in every sense -- inheritance, all parental rights, everything.
Guardianships come up in all kinds of situations. A family member caring for children because a parent is incarcerated, unable to be in the country, or dealing with mental health or substance issues. Older siblings caring for younger ones. Temporary stop-gap arrangements. The biological parents still retain parental rights throughout and can petition for termination of the guardianship at any point.
Kara: Adult adoptions are surprisingly straightforward. The main requirements are a ten-year age gap between the adopting parent and the adult being adopted, and some kind of established familial relationship. The most recent one I handled was a stepfather adopting two adult stepchildren in their late thirties. Their biological father had passed away, and they wanted to make official what had been true their whole lives. There was not a dry eye in the room.
Name changes are common for various reasons. One we’ve seen a lot of lately has to do with correcting paperwork discrepancies across government agencies -- different names on a passport, a Social Security card, a driver's license -- especially for clients trying to obtain citizenship abroad where foreign agencies are very particular about matching documents. Gender-affirming name changes are different and do not require publication in a local paper the way standard name changes do. California protects that privacy. And for anyone who went through a divorce and did not change their name at the time -- you do not have to file a new case. There is a form that can be filed directly in the original divorce case.
A lot of Bay Area families have complicated financial situations -- RSUs, stock options, pre-IPO equity, intellectual property. How does that show up in family law cases, and what do people get wrong?
Lydia: The biggest mistake is not understanding how differently each type of asset gets treated. Take RSUs on a vesting schedule. California is a community property state, so anything acquired during the marriage is presumed to be equally divided. But if RSUs were granted during the marriage and some vested before separation and some after, you cannot just split the account down the middle. There are portions that vest after the date of separation that are both separate property AND community property -- because that person has to keep working for those shares to vest and their work efforts after the date of separation are separate property. You have to calculate the apportionment between the community and separate carefully.
Another commonly overlooked issue is the cost basis on stock. If one spouse walks away with highly appreciated old shares and the other gets newer shares with a higher cost basis, the tax consequences when they sell are completely different. Someone can appear to be getting the same dollar amount and actually be getting far less after taxes. These are the kinds of details that can be exploited by a savvy spouse against one who does not know to look.
Kara: Pre-IPO equity is its own beast. If the stock is private and cannot be transferred between spouses, there are multiple ways to handle it. Some clients want to agree on a value and be bought out. Others want to wait and see, and have the stock transferred when it becomes liquid. We have to think through all of those options.
Lydia: And intellectual property developed during the marriage is community property -- even with no current tangible value. Licensing, royalties, future income potential. For anyone writing a book, building a platform, developing a product -- that matters. The community property interest in IP does not disappear just because nothing has been earned from it yet.
You are transparent about how retainers work at your firm -- clients replenish monthly so there are never surprise bills. Why did you build it that way?
Lydia: Honestly, we love the legal work and we do not love collections. We do not want to be in the position of slowing down on a case because a client's bill is already high, or wondering whether we are going to get paid for the work we just did. A retainer that covers at least a month of anticipated fees gives us a buffer where we can just focus on doing the best job possible.
Kara: It also makes the financial reality of legal fees much easier to manage for clients. Instead of coming back after a couple months and saying we need another ten thousand dollars right now, the replenishment happens incrementally. Clients can plan for it. It is just a more honest and less stressful way to structure the relationship.
How do you decide which cases to take, and what does your ideal client look like?
Lydia: It is a personality, not a financial profile. The best clients are people who are willing to trust our expertise and willing to work with other professionals to make good decisions. If someone comes in wanting to stay in the marital home, I am immediately asking: is your name on the mortgage? Can you refinance? Have you talked to a lender, a realtor, a financial planner? Have you thought about what happens when the roof needs replacing in three years? I want clients who want to be educated and empowered, not just told what to do.
Kara: And the ones we do not want are the ones who already know everything and have no interest in listening. If you think you know best about everything, you do not need us. We want to believe in the people we are working for. If someone is lying to us, or using us to punish an ex rather than resolve something, that is not a relationship we want. We will advocate hard for our clients, but not to the detriment of children, and not in ways we are not proud of.
Lydia: We do not do domestic violence defense. We will represent survivors, help them through divorce, help them obtain restraining orders. We will not take on a party where a restraining order has been legitimately filed against them. The exception is cases involving mutual restraining orders, which we review case by case. But if we know the potential client is an abuser, that is not a case for us.
You two have been building this firm together for years. What has the partnership taught you?
Lydia: People say you should not go into business with your best friend. They are dead wrong. A good partnership, like a good marriage, is built on communication and the willingness to have the uncomfortable conversations. Kara and I are not afraid to say when something is bothering us, even when we know it might not land well. Because of that, we always find a solution. I probably communicate better with Kara than with my own spouse.
Kara: A business partnership is a marriage. And no one tells you not to marry your best friend. Why would that logic not apply here? What also helps us is that our lives have been completely synchronized. Same age. Kids the same age -- our youngest two are three months apart to the day. Our husbands are friends. Our mother-in-laws are friends. We have always been in the same season of life, which means we have always had similar needs at similar time. That is rare in a partnership, and I think it has made everything easier.
If someone is reading this and realizing they need a family law attorney -- or just want to understand their options -- what is the best first step?
Reach out through the website at fosterhsu.com, call the office at 408-841-7200, or email our administrative team at [email protected] for referrals and intake. If mediation might be the right path for your situation, Foster Hsu offers a free 30-minute mediation consultation. Paid litigation consultations are available at $395 per hour.
The most important thing is just to start the conversation. Even if you are not sure what you need, a consult will help you understand your options -- and often, understanding what California law already says about your situation is the most valuable thing you can walk away with.
Website: fosterhsu.com
Phone: 408-841-7200
Referrals and intake: [email protected]
Free 30-minute mediation consultation available
Paid litigation consultation: $395/hour
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