Lavin has been married three times. Her first marriage to Ron Leibman ended in divorce in 1981. Her second marriage to Kip Niven, whom she met on the set of "Alice", ended in a bitter divorce in 1992. While Lavin has no biological children, she is the stepmother of the children of her second husband and plays an active role in their lives and she also plays an active role in the lives of her grandchildren, and she is also the stepmother of the children of her third and current husband, artist/musician Steve Bakunas, whom she married in 2005. The couple had resided in Wilmington, North Carolina where they were committed community members who were working together to rehabilitate impoverished neighborhoods including renovating many homes, donating a park to the city and creating a community theatre, the Red Barn Studio. In 1997, Lavin founded The Linda Lavin Arts Foundation in Wilmington, "to promote and foster the advancement of the performing and visual arts, with special emphasis on arts in education. Her foundation has created a theater program called Girl Friends, whose purpose is to raise the self-esteem of at-risk teenage girls of the inner city."