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I've contacted the clerk of court today. The attorney has never filed anything in my name.  What should I expect once I file the complaint and send the letter terminating the attorney's service? Has anyone reading gone through this before?

Thanks,

gnu

Hi notnew,

I guess I needed to hear advice from someone not emotionally involved in my situation.  Tomorrow I will move forward with this and call the clerk of court.  I haven't received any statements from my attorney and have told her so.

 I've recorded all of my phone calls to her office beginning the day she told me her legal assistant shredded my check. Come to think of it, the attorney seems to pass a lot of blame onto her legal assistants. I've told her several times that I haven't received any correspondence from her office about my case, billing, or anything. She told me that her legal assistant must have overlooked me. I did not buy the excuse, but was intimidated and worried that if I pissed her off, she'd excuse herself from my cased and keep my retainer. I now realized that the mistake has been made, and If I want a shot at custody, I need a competent attorney.

 I'll say goodnight by quoting the Irish dramatists George Bernard Shaw.  "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

Thanks again,

gnu

Good evening to you all,

In July 2006 I hired an Attorney to help me purse joint custody of my six year old son.  We agreed on a 3,000 dollar retainer fee that was to be paid before anything was done. I paid the retainer in full by August 31, 2006.  I received a statement from my Attorney showing that the balance was paid. Everything appears to be fine and she tells me that she will need 300 dollars to file the petitions for joint custody and a  name change. After paying the court costs, I am told that I we will have a court date in a couple of weeks.  A month goes by and I hear nothing from my attorney.  I make a call to her office and get the answering machine.  I continue to try her office once a week for two weeks. On the third week, I tell the answering service that I've been leaving messages for nearly three weeks now and I haven't receivd a call back from my attorney.  The answering service becomes defensive and tells me that they gave her the messages. I tell them that I'm not blaming anyone and I'd just like to know what's going on with my case.  That afternoon I my attorney calls and tells me that I owe her answering service an apolige. I proceed to tell her that I was not rude and I do not understand why they are making an issue out of my call. She says "Well, I guess it's the nature of the business".  Now that I've got the attorney on the phone, I ask about my court date. She tells me that her legal assistant must have shredded my check for 300 dollars that I'd written back in October (We are now in mid November), and that I need to write another.  At the end of our conversation she says that there are no hard feelings and that she was only joking about me apologizing to her answering service and asked that I be patient about my court date.  Months go by and I finally make contact with my attorney at the beginning of March 2007.  She tells me that my case was thrown out of court because the courts had the wrong address and could not server the papers to my son's mother.  I checked the email that I'd sent to the attorney and it was the correct address. My attorney had her legal assistant call a week later and tells me that I need to  send 500.00 dollars to cover court costs.  She said that court fees are like gas prices while explaining to me why they are now 200 dollars more than they were back in October 2006.  I paid the money, and she said that we'd have a court date in 10 days. A month went by and I've been calling every Thursday for the past two weeks. Last week I spoke with the legal assistant and I hear the attorney in the background say "tell him that I'm with a client and I'll call him back in 15 minutes". I said "Great, I'm at work and I'll wait here for the call". I waited an hour and 15 minutes and did not receive a phone call.  

I've considered filing an ethics complaint, but I have no money to hire another attorney.  

I now turn to you for advice.

Thanks,

gnu