My now Ex-wife went to Sondra and filed for Divorce in March. Bottom line for a no fault, no custody battle, no property battle and a more than fair split of all assests and retirement it still took this so called divorce lawyer 1 yr. To have the final decree entered. Sondra luered teh Ex in with a $3,500 retainer and hourly fee. My individual lawyer of which I am glad to have retained should have only cost me $4,500 but due to the incompetence and constant purposeful delays, simple errors (most of the cc: on faxes show my Ex as Mr.instead of Mrs.) & decisions that sometimes were not even known to my Ex (her client), my lawyers bill ended up twice as much.
The Ex is too ashamed and embarressed to admit she was taken for a ride but based on the back and forth and the hourly rate for Sondra her bill had to be at least $10-12,000 and is still not complete. Matter of fact here it is almost 4 months after the final decree and my employer has yet to received the QDRO distribution for my retirement account so my wife does not have the money that we agreed to over 6 months ago. Talk about lost interest. Plus I'm sure she is paying Sondra very well for filing these papers and still hasn't seen anything.
In reality I know my Ex did not have the funds to pay more than approx. $5,000 at the most for her services so my assumption is that Sondra made her a deal to pay once the retirement was received which in turn was bascially an open check book to Sondra of which why should she settle early on a no fault, no dispute divorce, you don't make legal fees like that right?
During the temporary orders I even in good faith paid the Ex an extra $500 per month and helped with big items for the kids. Yet Sondra always kept my Ex thinking I was cheating her somewhere.
After a lot of money spent on both our parts and 5 months into separation I finally made a business decision to get this woman (Sondra) out of my life for good and offered a more than fair settlement. Offered the Ex, custody of the kids, full max child support, 1/2 expenses for big items on kids, the house and all furnishings and half my retirement less the house equity. Yep we could have settled after 5 months but Sondra insisted on moving paper work back and forth and even told my Ex with no just cause she thought she could get her 60% of my retirement.
Well this went on for another 3 months and even few missed mediation and court dates that my Ex was told by her not to show up for in error. Matter a fact Sondra asked my lawyer to not have me come to the judges bench since my Ex was not present because it would look bad. Then she proceeded to lie to the judge that the reason we didn't mediate was the mediator was sick, not the truth that she requested it be cancelled because she wasn't ready. What kind of ethics is that?
Finally after 9 months and a lot of more money I involved my sister-n-law and shared all financial info with her to have here convince her sister that whatever extra she thought her lawyer was getting her was actually going to the lawyers and not us. Time to cut the strings, get this woman out of our life and make a Business Decision. Eureka, sis-n-law did a wonderful job and the wife finally told Sondra move forward and let's get it over with.
Great but one thing, Sondra had other business and vacation out of town so again more delays and thus after 9 months of baloney and finally an agreement it took another 3 months to get it to court. Mainly due to her law office not responding errors and throwing in unreasonable request for things that had already been agreed to.
Again the Friday before our court date her office made another big error and since Sondra was absent from the office again her paralegal said she had no authority to change anything. Thus me and my lawyer were on standby to go to court on Monday (additional cost for nothing) due to their incompentence.
Well I called the Ex and convinced her that if she didn't instruct them to go as planned and change things she also was going to court and would spend extra so she finally got it done at the last hour on a Friday afternoon. Court finally went as planned and we are now divorced and it's like I got a $1,000 month raise in my checking. But the Ex is still paying on hers since she still hasn't finalized the QDRO, house deed, etc.
Oh one more side bar, remember the $500 extra? Since it took and extra 4 months from the date of our agreement to the final decree I paid it even though according to all the paperwork drafted by Sondra not my attorney, including the final decree read it would be reduced beginning on the agreement date. The agreement was around Xmas so gracefully I did not cut it out right away so the Ex would have money for the kids Xmas but the next month I ran a test buy only paying the new agreed amount and fireworks went off.
The Ex called said her lawyer said that wasn't right that even though their paper work showed an earlier date to reduce I had to pay the extra amount until final divorce. Yeah, what incentive again is that to get the divorce final, they drag their feet and I pay more, baloney. Anyway since I saw light at the end of the tunnel I paid the extra up to the final decree so I didn't have to hear the griping.
Well after the final decree the child support system proved my point that I really didn't need to pay that extra. All along during the Temp. Orders I had paid my Ex by account transfer so she got the money instantly on the date instead of payroll deduct. She wanted it that way too because she needed the money.
But after the divorce it had to go through the Texas system so when the State first sent my withholding amount to my employer they indicated I was $6,000 behind in child support. I called and the reason they said was because when they received the divorce decree it showed I was to begin paying child support back on Dec. 1st and now it was March and they didn't show anything that I had made payments through them. Duh, I was paying direct, but this showed that Sondra was incorrect and that yes as I had explainded to my wife the extra amount obligation ended on Dec. 1st not on final divorce.
So thank goodness the Ex needed her child support real bad I had to convince her to call the State and sign a waiver that I owed no back support and in fact had paid approx. $2,000 more than required over those months. So she signed the waiver, I no longer have deducts and the State finally removed my incorrect back support from their records.
Sorry this was so long but you needed to read it all. It is bad enough going thru divorce and not being with you kids every day but to have a person like Sondra make your life so frustrating and stressful is uncalled for. Not to mention all the money the Ex and I wasted, close to $20,000 between us on this no big deal divorce that we both wanted and no hurdles except Sondra and her money producing business.
Suggest no one use Sondra as their attorney and beware if she is your soon to be Ex's attorney! You are in for a long painful ride! Speaking of "Ride" I must mention since I had to re-budget myself during all this pain, I now have extra per month so I bought a Harley Davidson for stress relief. Life is good again!!
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