But a year later, Mr. Friederwitzer made a successful legal motion for primary custody, claiming that the children’s mother, who had moved to Manhattan, had begun letting a non-Orthodox man sleep over and going out socially at night, leaving the girls alone.

At a time when courts typically awarded mothers custody, a state Supreme Court judge on Long Island ruled that the father was a more fit custodian. The mother challenged the ruling to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, which upheld the decision, ruling that the mother put her own interests over the best interests of her children.

“I can quote it,” Judge Friederwitzer said, reciting the decision’s wording that custody agreements could be altered “when the totality of circumstances” is “in the best interests of the child.”

“That’s what made this case so different — it changed the way things usually went,” she said. “It wasn’t just a knee-jerk reaction where the mother gets custody.”

The case — something of a real life “Kramer vs. Kramer,” the 1979 film that involved a painful courtroom custody battle and was emblematic of the surge in divorces at the time — seemed to follow young Lisa through her life, from the many classmates in school who knew about it, to her law school professors, to legal professionals over the years who recognized her last name.

After graduating from Queens College, and then Touro Law Center on Long Island, she began working at age 24 in Queens Family Court as a court-appointed law guardian, often on behalf of children.

In 1998, Judge Friederwitzer began working for the state court system in Queens Family Court, first as a court attorney assisting a judge, and then conducting hearings in child support and paternity cases.