Melissa M. Boyd has become one of Eastern Pennsylvania’s leading matrimonial attorneys, a productive and energetic lawyer. After more than 17 years as a partner at a prominent regional firm, in 2022 she launched, with colleague Elizabeth Early, an independent practice. Today Boyd & Early Family has offices in Montgomery and Chester counties, as well as a capable staff of lawyers. By all accounts she has established herself as a positive and grounding influence in matrimonial and family-law cases in Eastern Pennsylvania. Peers say Boyd - all know her as Missy - brings to her work maturity and poise, in part because, better than most lawyers today, she has balanced home and work life so effectively, no small achievement in these ultra-demanding times. What’s more, her background reflects strong character developed, and challenges overcome, early on: While growing up in Fort Washington, Md., outside Washington, she and her sisters were teens when their mother was diagnosed with cancer. “We were self-starters, very motivated, to begin with,” says Boyd today, “but the experience with our mother made us focus, on our family and our futures, in a way a lot of young people don’t.”

After graduating from Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, Va., she and her twin sister went on to, and roomed together at, Washington College, just across the Bay Bridge in Chestertown, Md., close enough to their mother (she passed away their freshman year) and father (“The greatest dad anyone could have - he held us all together”). Missy graduated in sociology near the top of her class and went straight on to law school (her twin sister Melanie majored in chemistry and became a pharmacist). “I thought I would combine my interest in social work with the law - in a real sense, that’s how it worked out.”

In law school she worked with children in low-income families in Baltimore, learning first-hand the legal system’s approach to families and their problems; later she interned with the ABA’s Center for Children and The Law, and clerked with Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Stuart R. Berger. After excelling in law school she was hired as an associate with Mattioni, Ltd., the longtime Center City firm. For two years (during which she took and passed the bar in three states) she focused on general litigation as well as acting as the firm’s sole family-law attorney for a period of time. Thereafter, Boyd spent nearly 20 years at the Norristown-based law firm High Swartz, where she ascended to partner in 2008 and eventually chaired the Domestic Relations Department starting in 2020.  Then, 2022 brought on the most exciting change in Boyd’s career as she opened up her own law firm, Boyd & Early Family Law LLC, with Elizabeth Early, Esquire.

Today Boyd & Early Family Law totals four lawyers, with two paralegals, and Boyd leads by example, handling an array of complex cases that can involve litigation, mediation and alternate dispute resolution. By all accounts she is cheerful and well organized, a natural multi-tasker. And, still relatively early in her career, Boyd is likely to continue to be regarded as one of Pennsylvania’s top family lawyers.

 Boyd and her husband Jeffrey Boyd (a Sergeant with the Hatfield Township PD) have three children.  In her free time, you can find her on the sidelines and in the stands, watching those children play volleyball, baseball and basketball. Boyd also prides herself in her community service work, frequently volunteering her time with the Montgomery Child Advocacy Project, Legal Aid, and within her community.