History of Hofheimer Family Law Firm
Back in 1991, Charlie Hofheimer, a Virginia Beach area attorney, noticed that there was a need. Women, he saw, were unable to get the divorce information they needed, and were often railroaded in divorce and custody cases. He partnered up with a group that was offering divorce seminars, and licensed the rights to perform the seminar in Virginia Beach—and so Second Saturday was born.
Eventually, Charlie decided to expand beyond the divorce seminars and open up his own firm dedicated to representing women only in divorce and custody cases. It was the first of its kind in Virginia, and remains the largest women’s only family law firm in the country.
Of course, for Charlie, this wasn’t out of nowhere. Charlie has a pretty illustrious history of fighting for the underdog, from volunteering for a year in the Alaskan backcountry, to getting kicked out of Russia by the KGB, and campaigning to have women admitted to Washington and Lee School of Law (where he is an alumnus). He also worked as an advocate for abused children alongside a local nonprofit, Champions for Children, and, more recently, was an aggressive participant in the local Norfolk Women’s March. He’s also happily married to his wife, Diane (who also worked with Charlie as his paralegal), of 50+ years, and the proud father of three children: Kristen, Kerry, and RD.
Charlie’s daughter, Kristen, went to law school at the University of Virginia as a single mom, sometimes even bringing her son, Shay, to class with her. She wrote an article for the law review, Breastfeeding as a Factor in Custody and Visitation cases in Virginia (which you can read and request a copy here), which was a great segue into a career in family law at the firm her parents built.
Kristen took over with gusto, maintaining many of the things Charlie had espoused, but also bringing her own flair to the firm. She announced that she wanted to start offering a custody seminar, Custody Bootcamp for Moms in addition to the Second Saturday seminars (which, by this point, had been running for over twenty years), designed to help Virginia moms learn how to represent themselves in their own custody and visitation cases at the juvenile court level.
Not satisfied yet, Kristen also decided to also start hosting Girl’s Night Out events, social events designed to help women connect with each other (no divorce or custody case required). It was something that she saw was needed from her experience with women going through divorce and custody cases, but even she was surprised to see how widespread that need was. The event series is a huge success, and the firm continues to offer these events for women from all over Virginia.
Kristen is a courageous and spirited advocate for women facing divorce and custody cases, much like her father before her, but with a modern spin. She was known for her skill in the courtroom and her compassion with her clients, constantly striving to make the firm better and offer HFLF clients even more opportunities. Unfortunately, health issues forced Kristen into an early retirement; Kristen, her son, Shay, and his wife, Morgan, moved to Burnsville, North Carolina (with Charlie and Diane) in summer 2017 to live together in “Hofheimer Holler.”
Enter Sheera Herrell. A Certified Financial Planner, trained collaborative attorney, and Charlie’s so-called “good” daughter, Sheera took over management of HFLF in May of 2017 following Kristen’s sudden retirement.
Sheera can handle anything, an attitude we originally noticed when she gave birth to her second child in the car on the way to the hospital, but which continues unabated to this day. She’s a passionate, meticulous, quick-thinking, and intelligent advocate whose motto is “efficient and effective”.
Sheera’s main goal for the firm is keeping up with all the programs and seminars Kristen and Charlie originally cultivated, and providing more avenues for Virginia women to get more educated about divorce and custody cases than ever before. Under Sheera, we’ve revamped our website to include all of our free books and reports on one easy to use page, and even added some new titles to our collection (including a four part “special issues” in custody series).
We’re missing Kristen and Charlie, but there’s no question that we boast one of the most talented group of lady lawyers in Virginia