Blumberg, Cherkoss, Fitz Gibbons & Blumberg

Where the firm puts its focus

The office works from Amityville, a village on the south shore of Long Island, and takes matters across both Suffolk and Nassau counties. Its work covers several distinct fields of law. For people in the area, that means one office can answer legal questions that surface at very different points in life.

The areas the site lists are elder law and Medicaid planning; wills, trusts, and estates; matrimonial and family law; criminal and traffic law; landlord and tenant and real estate; and general civil litigation. As a reviewer, I read that mix as the mark of a general practice, the kind of firm a household comes back to as its needs change. The firm says it keeps enough size to cover this range while holding to a small-firm approach, with clients usually working one-on-one with an attorney.

Ninety years in the same community

The firm dates its work to 1935 and counts about ninety years serving Amityville. A span that long carries a plain meaning: the office has kept working through many shifts in the local economy and in the law itself. Amityville itself is a small village, and a long-running local firm tends to know the county courts and the clerks who staff them. Continuity like that is uncommon among small practices, and it gives long-time residents a firm with real local memory. The firm links that history directly to the community it works in today.

How the team is built

Two attorneys appear on the site. Joshua P. Blumberg is the managing attorney, and Katelyn A. FitzMorris practices as an attorney with the firm. The site does not publish individual bios, law schools, or admission years, so a prospective client will want to ask about each attorney's background at a first meeting.

With a two-attorney roster, the one-on-one model the firm describes is easy to picture. A client meets the lawyer handling the file and keeps that contact as the matter moves along. In my opinion, that kind of direct access matters most in family and elder law, where one person needs to hold the full history of a case in mind.

What the family and estate work involves

Family law here covers divorce, custody, visitation and parenting time, child and spousal support, paternity, and adoption. These matters run through the state Supreme Court and the Family Court on Long Island, and many turn on financial disclosure and on parenting schedules that the parties agree to or that a judge sets. A firm that handles the full set can take a client through a support petition and a later custody question with the same lawyer on both. Adoption and paternity cases add their own steps, including consent, background review, and the court order that settles a parent and child relationship in law.

On the elder and estate side, the firm handles Medicaid planning, wills, trusts, estate planning, estate administration, probate litigation, and contested estates. Medicaid planning generally means arranging assets ahead of a possible need for long-term care, inside rules that reward planning done early. Estate administration is the practical work that follows a death: filing the will, notifying heirs, paying valid debts, and passing on what remains. When relatives disagree over a will or a share, the matter becomes a contested estate and moves into the Surrogate's Court. Because the firm does both the planning and the courtroom work, one office can draft an estate plan and later defend it if a dispute arises.

The litigation, criminal, and property side

The firm also takes criminal and traffic matters, including DUI defense, theft charges, and drug charges. Cases like these move through local and county courts, and early representation shapes how a charge is negotiated or tried. A DUI case in New York, for instance, can involve both the criminal charge and a separate action on the person's driving privileges, so the defense often runs on two tracks at once. The firm pairs traffic matters with the criminal practice, which fits a local client base that meets the court system most often over driving cases.

General civil litigation follows a familiar arc in the New York courts: a complaint, an answer, a stretch of discovery where each side exchanges documents and testimony, and then a settlement or a trial. Most disputes end before trial, so much of a litigator's effort goes into the discovery and negotiation stages. Landlord and tenant and real estate matters cover the property side of the practice, and keeping both transactional and courtroom work in one small office gives a client a single place to start when a property problem grows into a lawsuit.

Who the firm works with

The firm describes its clients as individuals, families, and businesses across Nassau and Suffolk. That mix fits the practice areas on offer, since one household might need a will in a quiet year and a landlord dispute the next, while a small business might want a lease reviewed and, later, a contract claim pursued. The appeal of that breadth is clear for people who prefer to keep their legal work in one familiar place. That breadth also means a client can raise a second, unrelated problem with a lawyer who already knows them. Joshua P. Blumberg and Katelyn A. FitzMorris are the attorneys who carry it out.