Law Office of Alexander Korotkin, Esq.

Focus and practice areas

The firm works only in areas tied to families and personal finances, and it centers that work on Rochester and the counties around it. Its core is family law: the legal side of separation, divorce, and the arrangements that follow. Alexander Korotkin, Esq., leads the firm as its founding attorney. Clients here are parents and spouses working through some of the harder transitions in family life.

The published list of practice areas is broad for a firm led by one named attorney. It covers divorce and contested divorce, child custody, child support, adoption, spousal maintenance, equitable distribution, separation agreements, qualified domestic relations orders, and modification and enforcement. The firm also handles bankruptcy. In my opinion, grouping bankruptcy with family work is a sensible fit, because money trouble and family change often arrive together.

The financial side of a separation

Money runs through several of the firm's practice areas, and equitable distribution is the clearest example. Equitable distribution is the New York rule for dividing marital property when a marriage ends, and it weighs what split is fair given the facts. Spousal maintenance covers the support one spouse may pay the other. The firm handles both.

Qualified domestic relations orders belong in the same group. A QDRO is the court order that divides a retirement account between spouses without a tax penalty, and it takes careful drafting. The firm prepares these orders as part of its divorce work. Its bankruptcy work can matter here too, since debt and property questions often overlap when a household separates.

Custody, support, and building families

The other half of the firm's family work centers on children. Child custody cases decide where a child lives and how parents share decisions. Child support sets the payments that follow. The firm represents parents on both sides of these questions.

Adoption sits at the happier end of this work. It is the legal process that makes a parent and child a permanent family in the eyes of the law. The firm also drafts separation agreements, which set out terms a couple agrees to before or in place of a court fight. When an existing order no longer fits a family's life, the firm handles modification and enforcement to change it or hold a party to it.

The attorney who leads the firm

Alexander Korotkin, Esq., founded the firm and carries its caseload. He earned his undergraduate degree from Union College in 1989. He then studied at SUNY Buffalo School of Law, where he took his J.D., cum laude, in 1994. New York State admitted him to practice the next year, in 1995.

Korotkin was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is fluent in Russian and understands Ukrainian, and he has practiced law in Rochester across his career. As a reviewer, I find that continuity worth noting, since family cases can run for months and gain from a steady hand.

How he runs a matter is straightforward. He negotiates agreements when spouses or parents can find terms between them, and he takes a case to court when it needs a judge to rule. That keeps both paths open, so the method can follow the shape of the dispute.

Where the firm works, and in which languages

The firm draws its clients from six counties in western New York. Those counties are Monroe, Livingston, Ontario, Wayne, Genesee, and Orleans. Rochester and Monroe County anchor the map, and the other five spread out around them across the Finger Lakes and Genesee Valley.

Language access is a practical feature of the firm. It offers services in Russian and Ukrainian, which lines up with Korotkin's own roots. The firm provides free initial consultations, so a prospective client can lay out a situation before deciding how to proceed.

Credentials and community service

Korotkin has belonged to the New York State Bar Association since 1995, the year of his admission. In 2000 he received the William E. McKnight Volunteer Service Award. That award recognized volunteer service, a strand of his work that sits beside his legal career.

His community role has a local footprint. Korotkin has volunteered in the Rochester area over the years. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Jewish Family Services of Rochester.