Goldman & Beslow, LLC Attorneys At Law

Focus and practice areas

The firm works in consumer bankruptcy across northern and central New Jersey. Its lawyers handle Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 cases for people who cannot keep up with what they owe. The two chapters answer the same problem in different ways. Chapter 7 clears qualifying debts through liquidation and discharge, while Chapter 13 sets up a repayment plan that a court approves and oversees.

The work reaches past the filing itself. Goldman & Beslow deals with creditor harassment, wage garnishments and bank account levies, which are often the pressures that push someone to call a lawyer. The firm also takes on repossession and foreclosure matters. For homeowners, that includes mortgage loan modifications and foreclosure mediation, both of which aim to keep a case out of a forced sale. Debt negotiation and consolidation appear on the firm's list as well, so not every client who calls is headed straight for a bankruptcy filing.

How the pieces connect

Several of these services meet at the same point in a case. Once a bankruptcy filing goes through, collection actions such as garnishments and creditor calls generally have to stop, and that pause is part of why people turn to Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 at all. The firm's listed work on levies, repossession and foreclosure sits in the same territory, where the aim is to hold off a loss while there is still time to weigh other options.

The firm describes itself as a debt relief agency that helps people file under the Bankruptcy Code. That phrase is a federal designation for lawyers who do this work, and the site uses it plainly. In my opinion, it sets a fair expectation. The firm is built around debtor-side relief, and the site presents the practice that way.

How the team is built

The firm's site names three attorneys: Mark Goldman, David G. Beslow and Catherine E. Finnerty. All three work in the same area, which keeps the practice narrow rather than stretched across unrelated fields. For a client, that focus means the person across the table handles bankruptcy day in and day out. Bankruptcy rules shift with amendments and court practice, so steady exposure to the same docket carries real value.

Mark Goldman has practiced bankruptcy law for more than 40 years and has centered his career on consumers. He belongs to the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys and the National Association of Consumer Advocates, two organizations tied to the debtor side of this field. David G. Beslow is a partner at the firm. He earned a B.A. from Hamilton College and a J.D. from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, and his work centers on consumer bankruptcy and debt. Catherine E. Finnerty has represented clients in bankruptcy and debt cases for roughly eighteen years.

Where the firm reaches

The firm keeps offices in East Orange, Newark, Paterson and Jersey City. That spread covers a good part of the northern half of the state and gives clients more than one place to meet. Its lawyers serve Essex, Union, Hudson, Passaic, Bergen, Morris, Middlesex and Sussex counties.

For someone deciding whether to call, the county list carries more weight than the office count. It answers a plain question: does this firm cover the place where I live and where my case would be filed? A New Jersey consumer bankruptcy runs through the federal court for the district, so a practice rooted in these counties fits the work it takes on. Someone who lives outside that band of counties would do well to confirm the firm still takes such a matter.

What the firm states about its record

By its own account, the firm brings more than four decades of bankruptcy experience and has helped over 10,000 people with debt. Those numbers come from the firm rather than an outside source, and a reader should weigh them on that basis. They do line up with Mark Goldman's stated career of more than 40 years, so the two claims support each other.

A directory reader gains little from treating a self-reported client count as a verified statistic. Still, the figure gives a sense of scale. A practice that has run this long tends to have met the common problems more than once, and that history is part of what a person is buying when they hire a bankruptcy lawyer.

Access and language support

The firm offers a free half-hour consultation, which gives a prospective client a way to lay out the situation before committing to anything. It also provides service in Spanish, marked on the site as Se Habla Espanol. For a household weighing bankruptcy, that language option can decide whether the first meeting is worth much at all.

As a reviewer, I read Goldman & Beslow as a focused consumer debt practice rather than a general firm that also files the occasional bankruptcy. The narrow scope, the county coverage and the three named attorneys point the same way. A person facing garnishment, a bank levy, foreclosure or a debt load they cannot carry can look at the site and see what the firm handles and where it works.