Practice Areas: Foster Care Adoption, Stepparent + Second Parent Adoption, Domestic Infant Adoption, Trust and Wills, Surrogacy, International Surrogacy, ART Law + Gamete Donor Agreements, Adult Adoption
Why I Practice in Family Law: "I was a family nurse practitioner. After law school, turning to family law was a natural pivot."
Foster Care Adoption, Stepparent + Second Parent Adoption, Domestic Infant Adoption, Trust and Wills, Surrogacy, International Surrogacy, ART Law + Gamete Donor Agreements, Adult Adoption
Mary Beck was a nursing professor teaching auscultation of heart and lung sounds. But as her hearing declined, she chose to attend law school. After practicing for a few years, she developed a strong affinity for advancing permanency for children and then began teaching law.
She worked with her students to research and publish analyses of family violence, draft and amend multistate laws and develop amici briefs to appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court for the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys. She also maintained a small private practice in adoption and surrogacy. Mary is now professor emerita at the University of Missouri School of Law but continues to teach one course per year: Sex, Reproduction and the Law.
She also maintains the Law Offices of Mary Beck with her daughter and law partner, Joanna Beck Wilkinson, who she describes as “more fun and doubly capable.”
Mary has four children and nine grandchildren, and she has been married 54 years.