Dear future attorney seeker,
Please understand that you, the consumer, have the right to be completely informed about an individual or company before you invest your hard-earned money into their service. Especially in the case of seeking legal representation.
I will be brief and to the point, as I understand your time is valuable. Mickey Onifer was supposedly a personal acquaintance of my significant other. They both had previously lived within local vicinity. He offered to represent her free of charge through a divorce proceeding over a conversation at the local YMCA. Please note. My significant other is an extremely attractive woman in her mid 20's. Mr. Onifer is understood to be a single, middle aged man. I am not completely sure. My significant other embraced his generous offer to represent her through her divorce proceeding. His invitation was further suggested with an offer for her "to come swing by my office after business hours" and "we can discuss the specifics of your case."
After the verbal agreement had commenced, he agreed to file her paperwork, and forward the paperwork to the appropriate parties thereafter. My significant other assumed everything was going according to plan because she had never heard back from either him or any other members of his law office.
On her final court date, the court informed her that the paperwork was "submitted too early, " hence causing her divorce proceeding to be "dismissed." Apparently Mr. Onifer recieved notice of the paperwork, yet my significant other was never informed.
And consumers - get this. According to the court's case history report we received after the actual hearing date was over, Mr. Onifer recieved a notice from the court on September 30 stating the case was dismissed. Yet he still scheduled a new hearing date for the same case October 8! Does that make any sense whatsoever? Why would he schedule a hearing date for a dismissed case? Furthermore, why did he not let us know about it?
After suffering the embarrassment of not only having the paperwork submitted incorrectly and having everyone dragged out to the court house only to be asked to go home on behalf of a previously dismissed case, she is now required to file all the paperwork herself. She also has to pay the filing fee all over again, and furthermore be blamed for not calling Mr. Onifer back to discuss this whole situation. Not even to mention having to suffer the embarrassment of Mr. Onifer's false accusations right in front of her ex! Mr. Onifer had the audacity to blame my significant other for not following through with the paperwork correctly, and furthermore accused her of "not calling his office to follow up." This was totally incorrect. She emailed him several times and called his office to follow up with it. Secondly, we are led to believe that Mr. Onifer may or may not have had more important cases to work on. Perhaps ones he was being paid for. Who knows.
The sole reason I am writing you this letter is because if you are happily married, you can relate. We are two weeks away from Christmas day. I was planning on asking her to be my bride on Christmas day. Because of Mr. Onifer's lack of attention to detail, I am now required to wait until we hire a new attorney, who knows what he/she is doing, and pay him or her to represent us in order to finalize this already difficult situation. Only then can I ask the woman I love to marry me.
There is nothing more painful in this world than not being able to help the one person whom you love the most in life. And needless to say when I called his law office (for the second time) to discuss how we could rectify the situation, he hung up on me in what I consider to be a cowardly manner, instead of owning up to his mistakes and rectifying it. He finalized our dialogue by stating "I don't represent you, I represent her. If she wants it addressed, have her call me, " and then disconnected the call.
In finality, I can sleep better at night knowing that I did what I could by calling him to work it out and furthermore writing this complaint.
Mr. Onifer, if you ever have the displeasure of reading this, I ask you to walk away with one piece of advice from an average Joe. Do not for a second think that you are above the law and can blame someone else for your mistakes. Take ownership of your career responsibilities.
Fellow Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey consumers, beware. Perhaps after reading this, Mr. Onifer will try that much harder to do his job to the best of his ability and not blame his clients for his mistakes. Even if he is not getting paid for it.
Regretfully,
An average Joe protecting the woman he loves
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