Elizabeth Schwartz has been practicing law since 1997 and is a nationally recognized advocate for the legal rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) community. She is the author of the book Before I Do: A Legal Guide to Marriage, Gay and Otherwise (The New Press, 2016). While her Miami-based firm works with all clients in matters of family law, estate planning and probate, she has been at the forefront of providing crucial legal protections for LGBTQ+ families. She lectures locally, nationally and internationally about critical topics including the impact of nationwide marriage equality and the continued importance of LGBTQ+ couples protecting their loved ones through estate planning, stepparent and second parent adoption. She focuses her practice in family formation (adoption, insemination, and surrogacy) and dissolution, and handled the first divorce for a same-sex couple in Florida.
Elizabeth is board certified by the Florida Bar in Adoption Law, is a fellow of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys and the Florida Adoption Council, and serves as an adoption intermediary helping make forever families of all kinds. Elizabeth has handled surrogacy for 25 years, assisting intended parents, gestational carriers and egg and sperm donors with their legal needs. She is the co-author of the chapter on surrogacy in the forthcoming Fifteenth Edition of Adoption, Paternity, and Other Florida Family Practice (Florida Bar/LexisNexis, 2024) and author of "LGBT Issues in Surrogacy" in the Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy, ed. E. Scott Sills (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Elizabeth is counsel on a lawsuit challenging the law known as "Don’t Say Gay or Trans." She served as counsel on the victorious cases challenging Florida's marriage ban brought by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) on behalf of six same-sex couples and members of the Equality Florida Institute seeking the right to marry (Pareto v. Ruvin) and suing Florida for fair issuance of birth certificates to same-sex married couples (Chin). She also served as counsel in several cases that helped overturn Florida's bigoted 1977 ban forbidding gays and lesbians from adopting children.
She is a member of the National Family Law Advisory Council of NCLR as well as its National Leadership Council, Associate Treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and a member of the Jewish LGBTQ Donor Network. Also a certified family mediator and a member of the Collaborative Family Law Institute, she treats the law as a therapeutic profession, facilitating relationship dissolution with minimal investment of emotional and financial resources.
For her years of service, SAGE (a nationwide non-profit providing advocacy and services for LGBT elders) honored Elizabeth with their 2023 Pioneer Award. She received the 2018 Leading Practitioners Award presented by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. Elizabeth was also honored at the 23rd Annual Breaking the Glass Ceiling Awards by the Jewish Museum of Florida- FIU in 2019. She received the 2017 Stanley C. Myers Presidents’ Leadership Award from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, the 2016 Anti-Defamation League’s Jurisprudence Award, and the ACLU of Florida’s 2015 C. Clyde Atkins Award. In 2014, the University of Miami School of Law Center for Ethics and Public Service recognized Elizabeth with its Lawyers in Leadership award. She received the National LGBTQ Task Force's 2012 Eddy McIntyre Community Service Award. Also in 2012, Elizabeth was tapped for membership into Iron Arrow, the highest honor attained at the University of Miami. Equality Florida, the statewide LGBTQ+ rights group, honored Elizabeth in 2011 with its Voice for Equality Award. In 2010, Elizabeth was named by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association as one of the country's Best LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40, and also received the Women Worth Knowing Award from the City of Miami Beach Commission for Women. In 2008 she was honored with the "Valuing Our Families" Community Award, presented by Sunserve. In 2007, she received the Dade County Bar Association's Sookie Williams Award and the Aqua Foundation for Women Leadership Award. And in 2005, she received the Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Community Award.
A Miami Beach native, Elizabeth received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Miami in 1997. A lefty and a Scorpio, Elizabeth lives with her wife, writer Lydia Martin, and their rescued Havanese, Gracie Kenisha de la Caridad, in Miami's urban core.
"LGBTQ Families in Court" - Newsletter for KidSide's Judges Corner - by Hon. Scott Bernstein & Elizabeth Schwartz, September 2022 ]
Chapter 9: "Surrogacy & Related Matters" in Adoption, Paternity, and Other Florida Family Practice The Florida Bar, Fifteenth Edition
"Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Bias" in Family Advocate American Bar Association Section of Family Law, February 2022, "Bias" Volume 44 Issue 3
Before I Do: A Legal Guide to Marriage, Gay & Otherwise (The New Press, 2016)
"LGBT Issues in Surrogacy" in Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
"The Many Faces of Transgender Discrimination" in Trial Magazine (American Association for Justice, Oct. 2016)
"Trailblazing Advocacy" in Out and About: LGBT Experience in the Profession (American Bar Association, 2015)
