Melissa Salfi

Melissa Salfi

Melissa Salfi is a senior family and fertility lawyer, certified collaborative divorce lawyer and accredited family law mediator. She is committed to helping families through significant life transitions with a warm, compassionate, and practical approach. Melissa has a background in psychology and strives to empower her clients during challenging times. While her litigation experience is considerable, she is also a skilled, adaptable, and culturally sensitive mediator, offering affordable out-of-court resolutions to family law matters when possible.

Holistic Family Law Solutions

As a mediator, Melissa is approachable, caring, and perceptive. She is adept at understanding situations and perspectives quickly and is dedicated to finding creative solutions that are tailored to each family she works with. Having lived in five countries and completed specialized training in international dispute resolution in Europe, she brings a culturally sensitive and adaptable approach to her mediations. Melissa has completed over 100 hours of mediation training, including family violence screening, and is also a certified collaborative lawyer. This combination of training and experience enables her to provide a holistic, non-adversarial mediation style that works with parties to achieve durable, interest-based resolutions.

Melissa offers the following family law services:

• Mediation for a variety of issues, from pet ownership to parenting time and property division
• Collaborative divorce representation
• Desk Order Divorces
• Separation agreements
• Cohabitation agreements
• Prenuptial agreements
• Postnuptial agreements

Navigating the Complexities of Fertility Law

Beyond family law, Melissa has an established fertility law practice representing donors, surrogates, and intended parents. Her passion for assisting individuals and couples to build their families is reflected in the fertility law services she offers:

• Donor agreements: sperm, egg, and embryo
• Surrogacy agreements for intended parents and surrogates
• Independent legal advice on fertility contracts
• Declaration of parentage court applications
• Litigation over reproductive material such as frozen embryos or gamete

Along with fertility clinic leaders, academics, and legal experts in reproductive law, Melissa is involved in a law reform project on the law of parentage. Specifically, she is a member of the British Columbia Law Institute Project Committee that is tasked with reviewing the law of parentage as set out in Part 3 of the Family Law Act.

See: About Fertility Law | Path to Parenthood

Outside of the office, Melissa is a busy mom who enjoys yoga, café hopping, and connecting with people from different cultures. Melissa is fluent in Swedish and has intermediate proficiency in Spanish and Hebrew.