A life-long advocate for children and families, Meredith Tipton is an established family law trial attorney whose practice is concentrated in adoptions, guardianships, and foster parent representation. In her adoption practice, she assists families in the adoption process from the initial meeting between birth parents and adoptive parents to the finalization of the adoption. She handles private adoptions, agency adoptions, and adoptions through the Department of Human Services. She also enjoys representing children as guardian ad litem in divorce and custody cases.
In addition to being a certified forensic interviewer for children and qualified guardian ad litem with required domestic violence training, Meredith is also a frequent speaker at conferences sponsored by the Oklahoma Court Improvement Program and the Oklahoma Guardian Ad Litem Institute.
While a law student at the University of Oklahoma, Meredith participated in trial advocacy competitions and interned at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where she fell in love with litigation.
She began her legal practice at the Tulsa County District Attorney’s office in 2005 as an assistant district attorney handling juvenile deprived cases with children in the custody of the Department of Human Services. She and her husband later moved back to Norman, Oklahoma, where she worked at the Cleveland County District Attorney’s Office as a child abuse and neglect prosecutor. In her 10 years as an assistant district attorney, she prosecuted and tried more than 40 jury trials and hundreds of non-jury trials with a nearly perfect success rate. While handling the juvenile deprived cases and prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases, she also started a family drug court program to assist parents in sobriety and reunification with their children. During that time, she was a member of the multidisciplinary child protection team and was honored with the Norman Chamber of Commerce’s Crime Stoppers Public Safety Award for being a champion for children in the community.
In 2016, Meredith entered private practice and joined Blaney, Tipton, Hiersche & Odom, PLLC. Her legal practice began with finalizing the adoptions of children in foster care seeking permanent forever homes. She quickly grew her practice to also handle private adoptions, representing both birth parents and adoptive parents, as well as working with adoption agencies. A majority of her legal practice is now focused on representing foster parents in navigating the foster care system, advocating for permanent placements, mediations, contested adoptions, best interest hearings, and post-adoption contact agreements. She is experienced in handling cases involving the Indian Child Welfare Act and has successfully tried many contested adoptions and guardianships. Over the course of her private practice career, she has assisted hundreds of children in finalizing their adoption and finding their forever families.