Justia Legal Services & Lawyers Directory

Practice Areas
Mr. Tharp practice areas include both business litigation and family law matters. Much like his law partner, Mr. Meriwether, he finds that handling both types of cases provides unique advantages for his clients. His business litigation and small business experience helps provide extensive financial expertise in handling divorces with large, complicated estates. His family law practice helps provide more frequent courtroom experiences that help him to continue to learn how to best present cases in front of judges and juries.
Mr. Tharp handles a broad range of family law cases including divorce, modification actions, contempt proceedings, and appellant work. He regularly handles estates with large and unique assets, such as a business which can be difficult to value during a divorce proceeding. Mr. Tharp has completed formal mediation training and utilizes this knowledge to achieve favorable results while amicably trying to resolve matters for his clients. Although Mr. Tharp strongly believes that parties should try to resolve matters in a collaborative fashion whenever possible, he also willing, when necessary and appropriate, to utilize his extensive debate skills in a courtroom for his client’s advantage.
General Background and Education
Robert L. Tharp was born on Beale Air Force Base, California. As a child of a military family, he has lived all across the United States and abroad. In high school, Mr. Tharp started to compete at a national level in high school debate.

Mr. Tharp went college at Emory University and graduated in 1993. While in college, Mr. Tharp served as an active leader on campus and was president of the College Republicans, statewide officer of the College Republicans, president of the Georgia Conservancy, student representative to the Southern Accreditation Committee, and officer of Delta Tau Delta. Mr. Tharp also continued to develop his debate skills in college winning numerous college debate tournament awards including best freshman debater, most improved debater, and 1st place at Vanderbilt’s national debate competition. Mr. Tharp also reached elimination rounds for the national debate championship during his time in college.
Mr. Tharp stayed at Emory for law school and received his Juris Doctor Degree in May of 1996. In addition to the rigors of a law school curriculum, Mr. Tharp remained active within the college and high school debate community by helping to coach Emory University’s college debate program and serving as an assistant debate coach for several local high schools including Milton high school in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Mr. Tharp has continued to advance his education and skills since graduation from law school, most recently with his completion of formal mediation training to help better serve his client’s needs in this growing area of dispute resolution.
Civic Involvement
Mr. Tharp served on the Board of Directors for Emory University’s debate program, the Barkley Forum for a number of years. As part of Mr. Tharp’s contributions to Emory during this time period, he ran the Lincoln Douglas portion of the annual Barkley Forum for high school debate tournament at Emory University (the largest high school debate tournament in the nation) while supervising and coaching Emory students during the school year and high school students and high school teachers during annual summer debate workshops. Mr. Tharp also provided extensive help to the Georgia’s high school debate community by helping to run twenty plus high school tournaments a year throughout the greater Atlanta area including tournaments at Milton and Chattahoochee high school.

In addition, Mr. Tharp helped to establish and provided extensive hands-on service for the Urban Debate League program for high school and junior high school students. Mr. Tharp worked with establishing three of the initial Urban debate league programs in this country in Atlanta, Baltimore, and New York – a program that has expanded to 18 of the nation’s largest cities, served 311 urban high schools, 51 urban middle schools, and 37,000 urban public school students.

For these accomplishments, Mr. Tharp was the sole recipient of Emory University’s prestigious Warren Akin Outstanding Alumni Contribution award in 1998.

Political Background
Over the years, Mr. Tharp has been active in numerous state and federal campaigns for local, state and federal races from judges and state representatives to United States Congressmen. He has served various campaign roles from volunteer to campaign coordinator.

In addition, Robert L. Tharp was one of the founding members of a political consulting firm that managed various state and local level campaigns. Not only did this firm provide him with invaluable experience developing and executing comprehensive campaign plans, issues and materials, it also taught him lessons of how to run a business and the struggles that small businesses must manage.

Practice Areas

Since 2000, Mr. Meriwether has focused seventy percent (70%) of his practice on family law and thirty percent (30%) on business law. Through time, he has found that family and business law complement each other well in practice, as his skills from one area transfer easily to the other. Business litigation cases tend to require fewer Court appearances, but the family law cases of Mr. Meriwether's practice has afforded him the opportunity to appear in Court more often and hone skills necessary both for family law and business litigation. Mr. Meriwether's business litigation and transactional work provide the experience and ability to examine and tirelessly move through financial documents, both for business cases, including personal and small businesses, as well as family law cases involving large marital estates in need of equitable division.

Mr. Meriwether utilizes the latest computer software to maintain detailed and comprehensive records of his complex cases. This software allows Mr. Meriwether and his clients to quickly access case information and ensures that no details of the case are overlooked.

Family Law

Mr. Meriwether handles a broad range of family law cases, including divorce, adoption, child custody and support modification, adoption, domestic violence, and premarital agreements. He regularly deals with marital assets ranging from those of little or even negative value to those worth millions of dollars, and competently calculates spousal and child support when applicable.

Mr. Meriwether has said, "In the Courtroom, we zealously represent our clients. But often, fierce litigation is not the best way to resolve a divorce, and we work to settle cases through active negotiation. A divorce can be the most life altering and stressful event anyone can go through, but it does not have to be." To help alleviate the stress often involved in family law cases, Mr. Meriwether takes a collaborative approach to family law. This approach involves utilizing negotiation and mediation to help maintain an amicable relationship between the parties. In cases with children, collaborative law protects the children above all else, creates a win/win situation for the parties, and the parties walk away as satisfied as possible.

In some family law cases, collaborative law will not work, or is inappropriate. Mr. Meriwether evaluates every case on an individual basis to determine how aggressive to approach the case based on the facts, the Court in which the case will be heard, and the Judge who will hear the case. The goal is to achieve the best possible outcome for an individual client. In Mr. Meriwether's experience, compared to a more subtle approach, a "take no prisoners" attitude often results in higher lawyer's fees without a corresponding increase in the achieved result. As such, Mr. Meriwether aims to provide the correct level of aggressiveness to each case for the best result possible.

Business Law

Mr. Meriwether handles a variety of business law cases including simple and complicated business formations, and business divorces. He routinely forms Limited Liability Companies and Corporations. In so doing, he often is asked to draft complex contracts to assist the new business entity with its operations. He also assists clients with the buying and selling of businesses (including the due diligence associated with this process).

Mr. Meriwether views business formations involving a group of friends or acquaintances as marriages, albeit financial ones, and he excels in spotting potential pitfalls when parties are entering into a business relationship. He works hard to ensure that his clients enter into their business ventures well-informed and protected from whatever business complications they may encounter.

Membership

State Bar of Georgia (Member of the Family Law and Business Law Sections)
The Florida Bar
American Bar Association (Member of the Family Law and Business Law Sections)

Admissions
1996, Georgia
1996, Florida

Speaking Engagements
LLC Trends and Developments by National Business Institute. Continuing Legal Education for fellow attorneys.

Arbitration
In 2007, Mr. Meriwether obtained his certification for arbitration. He is ready to arbitrate any Family Law issues and most Business Law matters.

Professional Experience - Mr. Meriwether was admitted to practice law in Florida and Georgia in 1996. In 1998, Patrick L. Meriwether left the Atlanta office of Arthur Anderson and joined Robert Tharp to establish Meriwether & Tharp. His position at Arthur Anderson involved providing tax advice to a variety of large corporations. Mr. Meriwether; however, missed the personal satisfaction that comes with running his own practice and assisting small businesses and individuals with their legal needs. This is where he felt that he could really make the biggest difference.

Community Experience - Mr. Meriwether volunteers time to teach Judo to both children and adults. He holds a Black Belt in Judo and, when he competed in law school, he was the Florida State Champion in his weight division two years in a row. At the 2007 Georgia State Games, he won the gold in his division.

I have been in practice since 1992. My practice primarily focuses on business and probate litigation. I have handled numerous appeals to the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court for my clients.

My firm is a small firm specializing in superior service to our clients. Prior to practicing law, I owned a large printing, publishing company that I sold.

My team consists of two lawyers and a paralegal who has worked with me for many years. We are technologically savvy and communicate with our clients via email where possible.

Through the other attorney in my office, we handle domestic matters as well as other civil litigation.

Nora Polk, a native Texan, received her B.A. in Political Science from Texas A&M University and her Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. During her law school career, she attended the University of Cape Town in South Africa to study comparative justice through a Study Abroad program.

Ms. Polk worked for Atlanta Legal Aid Society for over eight years in the Downtown and Gwinnett County offices. She handled an active caseload of domestic relations, family violence, housing, consumer, public benefits, and disability cases. She was the supervising attorney of the Gwinnett office, managing student interns, paralegals, and new lawyers.

In July 2007, Nora Polk partnered with fellow Atlanta Legal Aid supervising attorney, Adrienne Ashby. Ashby & Polk, LLC, is located in downtown Atlanta. It is a law firm specializing in wills, trusts, estate planning, powers of attorney, guardianship, probate, elder law, divorce, custody, legitimation, and child support.


She has been featured in local publications, including the Atlanta Bar Magazine. She has also appeared on television as a legal expert for the local news and as a guest speaker on Layman’s Lawyer.


Ms. Polk is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, and the Gwinnett County Bar Association. She is a member of the Founding Class of the State Bar of Georgia Young Lawyers Division’s Leadership Academy.


Ms. Polk is married to Philip Polk. They have two sons, Kobie Alexander Polk and Nile Christopher Polk.

Teresa Garcia’s practice concentrates in the field of Family Law, Adoptions and Wills. She handles contested and uncontested divorces, child custody, child support, alimony, visitation, paternity/legitimation, amendment of birth certificates, name changes, enforcement of judicial orders, post-judgment agreements, family violence protective orders and prenuptial agreements.

Ms. Garcia handles contested and uncontested adoptions for relative adoptions, step-parent adoptions, independent adoptions (where adoptive parents are not related to the child), agency adoptions, adult adoptions, domestication of foreign adoptions, and re-adoptions.

Ms. Garcia also handles wills, estate planning, powers of attorney and guardianships.

She represents clients in all metro-Atlanta counties including the outer counties of Georgia. She is fluent in Spanish.

Mr. Villanueva graduated from Emory University, Magna Cum Laude in 2000 majoring in Political Science and minoring in Economics. Mr. Villanueva attended Syracuse University College of Law and obtained his juris doctor and masters in Economics from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2003. While at Syracuse Law, Mr. Villanueva had worked as an assistant to the Commercial Real Estate Practice Group at Pyramid Managment Group, Inc. in Syracuse, New York. Mr. Villanueva was an Associate Editor of the Syracuse Law and Technology Journal and member of the Corporate Counsel Certificate Program as well as the Law and Market Economy Program.

Mr. Villanueva is former judicial law clerk to the Honorable Diane J. Larsen of the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, Illinois.

Mr. Villanueva practiced residential and commercial real estate, corporate law and bankruptcy and was previously employed by Krevolin & Horst, LLC, The Moss Law Firm, LLC and The Johnson Law Group ALG (Of Counsel) prior to opening his practice in 2007.

Mr. Villaneuva resides in Atlanta, Georgia and is a legal instructor at Gwinnett College where he continues to teach bankruptcy and family law. Mr. Villanueva is a probono volunteer Attorney with the Georgia Legal Services Program Piedmont Division in Atlanta as well as a member of the Gwinnett County Bar Association and the Syracuse Alumni Association of Atlanta.

Mr. Villanueva was born in 1977 in Agana, Guam (U.S. Territory) and is proud son of Chief Petty Officer Ricardo P. Villanueva United State Navy (deceased) and Nelly C. Villanueva, US Veterans Administration Registered Nurse and proud brother of Gigi Lynn Estrada Registered Nurse.

Mr. Villanueva enjoys playing guitar, singing, reading, volunteering, running and painting.