Get to Know Us
Life Stages Law, PLLC has been serving clients since 2024 with compassion,
skill and respect. We pride ourselves on providing the highest quality service,
using efficient procedures, while not sacrificing the personal touch our clients deserve. We understand the challenges and emotion that comes with
every case and are here for you, every step of the way.
Life Stages Law, PLLC is a virtual, boutique law firm that works with clients
from near and far. Please contact us for more
tailored information about how we can assist you.
Christine M. Hanisco, Esq.
Founder and Owner of Life Stages Law, PLLC
Attorney Hanisco combines over three decades of legal experience and her personal journey with infertility to bring compassionate and skilled representation to her clients. Chrissy’s practice focuses on family building through adoption and assisted reproduction technology (ART law). So that all families' futures are legally secure, she also focuses on estate and life planning tailored toward her clients’ specific needs. She is licensed to practice law in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Chrissy has been practicing law since 2000, and has a long history of legal service for indigent and needy populations. Chrissy spent over 11 years with the New Hampshire Public Defender’s Office, where she represented indigent criminal defendants and juveniles. Chrissy’s legal experience also includes representation of adults and children with disabilities, and prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases.
After an infertility diagnosis in 2011, Chrissy began considering private practice and using her legal skills to assist others with similar family building challenges. She joined The Stein Law Firm in Concord, New Hampshire in 2015 and established the firm's adoption and assisted reproduction technology practice. Due to her dedication and high ethics, she quickly established herself in this small, unique practice area as a trusted colleague and has worked with agencies, attorneys and clients throughout the United States and the world. Chrissy is passionate about utilizing her legal experience and decades of negotiation skills to help her clients in this emerging and constantly changing area of law. She assists clients with all the legal aspects of surrogacy, from agency selection to contracts to establishing parental rights. When working with surrogates, she makes sure that the surrogate and their family is protected. She regularly works with gamete donors, both egg and sperm, and recipient parents. Chrissy also regularly consults with marital attorneys regarding embryo disposition, and also works with individuals and couples who seek to donate their unused embryos to others.
Chrissy’s adoption practice includes all aspects from private newborn adoption to stepparent adoptions. The majority of her private adoption cases involve interstate issues, and she is knowledgeable in the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC). Chrissy regularly represents grandparents and other family members who seek guardianship of a minor and/or adoption of their family member, as well as same-sex couples seeking a confirmatory adoption of their children conceived through assisted reproduction. Chrissy drafted and successfully advocated for the passage of legislation in New Hampshire that requires the Courts to grant confirmatory adoptions (also known as second parent adoptions) for same-sex couples even when the couple is married, permits unmarried couples to adopt, and also permits two interested parties (such as a grandparent and an aunt or uncle) to adopt a child together.
Chrissy feels strongly that all families should be protected and recognized by the law. Her estate and life planning practice adds the additional protections that her clients need to make sure that the person they desire is able to make financial and health care decisions for them when they cannot. She also assists her clients in drafting wills and establishing trusts that will protect their financial futures and the futures of their children or other beneficiaries.
In February 2023, the New Hampshire Bar Association honored Chrissy with the Vickie M. Bunnell Award for Community Service. Instituted in 1998 to honor the memory of Vickie M. Bunnell “A Country Lawyer” and to applaud community spirit, this award is presented to an attorney from a small firm who has exhibited dedication and devotion to community by giving of their time and talents, legal or otherwise. This award recognized Chrissy's professional and community service contributions in New Hampshire and beyond.
Chrissy has drafted and advocated for several pieces of legislation that have greatly benefited Granite State Families - including the aforementioned updates to New Hampshire adoption law in 2020, updates to New Hampshire's parentage laws in 2023, and she especially is proud of the 2019 Access to Fertility Care bill which became law and requires fully funded employer group insurance plans to cover infertility diagnosis, fertility treatment and fertility preservation. She works cooperatively with stakeholders to ensure that the law works for all individuals and families.
Presently, Chrissy serves on the New Hampshire Bar Association Board of Governors, as a Governor-at-Large (2019-Present) and as Vice President of Resolve New England’s Board of Directors (2021-Present) (Secretary 2017-2021; Volunteer Peer Leader 2013-2023). A 2017 founding member of the Grievance Committee for the Society of Ethics in Surrogacy and Egg Donation (SEEDS) she worked with Grievance Committee members and SEEDS Leadership to establish a process for addressing complaints against its members from intended parents, donors and gestational carriers. In 2024 she was recognized by her peers in the milestone 30th edition of The Best Lawyers in America® for her work in Family Law and Trusts and Estates. She also is a member of the New Hampshire Women's Bar and credits their book club with helping her find her way back to reading for pleasure after law school, career and family!
She is a former Executive Committee Member for the Capital Region Mothers of Multiples and remains an active member, She also is a past adjunct faculty member at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord, where she taught legal writing and research in both the Paralegal Program and the Legal Nurse Consultant Certificate Program. Chrissy also fondly recalls her days as a Girl Scout, and especially her time as a Troop Leader, and her seven year relationship as a Big Sister with Big Sister Association of Greater Boston. Seeing "her girls" all grown up, parenting and making significant contributions to their communities brings her great pride.
Originally from Connecticut, Chrissy first came to New Hampshire in 1989 as a student at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. She graduated, cum laude, in 1993 and then spent several years working at the New Hampshire Department of Justice, first as a volunteer mediator and then as a paralegal, in the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau. In 1997 she enrolled full-time at New York Law School in New York City, where she was a 3-year recipient of the Dean’s Merit Scholarship. While at NYLS she was the Executive Articles Editor of the New York Law School Journal of Human Rights and the recipient of several honors and awards. After graduating with her J.D., cum laude, in May 2000, she clerked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Juvenile Court Department.
Chrissy resides in Concord, New Hampshire with her family. Her 2024 reading goal is 55 books and completing the Concord Public Library's Ultimate Book Nerd Challenge!