I have been separated since July,2009. I hired an attorney then and spent years getting a sep agreement drawn up, accepted, etc. the amount of time and money I spent was a waste with regards to what I am supposed to receive in the settlement. My husband took a lesser job, he and his attorney dragged their feet and I lost in the long run. He had had an affair for years with my friend and i lost anyway.
We had a meeting in late september to finalize the sep agreement, qudro, etc. I received a rough draft of the consent order in early December (over 60 days later, although I thought she had 30 days). It was sent to his attorney on dec 12, with no response as of yet. My ex husband has not even seen it yet. During this time I have gotten a notice from my attorney if her increase in fees, etc effective January 1.
The only thing that has been completed was our divorce because we did this without any attorneys involved. I actually signed a waiver so they could get married the next week.
Needless to say, I have done everything I am supposed to do to move this process along as quickly as possible. I have spent over 10000 in attorney fees to receive 9000 before taxes in a qudro and less than 50 a month in child support.
My attorney and his attorney have no sense of time or urgency to complete anything. I understand the legal system takes time but 2.5 years for a small insignificant case is ridiculous. I thought there was also a 30 day timeframe on completing a consent order.
What are my rights as a person with this? Every time he doesn’t answer an email, I pay my attorney to recontact them, etc. what can I do?
I am sorry that things are taking so long to resolve with your attorney, but the good news is that it looks like you are finally at the end of this process. You already have the divorce over and the consent order is being finalized now. I’m not sure I understand your question or situation here, but if the friendly complaint for the consent order was filed with the court, you have officially 30 days to answer from the time you are served. Most of the time, no answer is made in response to a friendly complaint but you have the 30 days anyway. You don’t have 30 days to draft the consent order. I wish you the best and hope that this will be over with as soon as possible.
My question is this. How can these attorneys legally delay and drag this out at my expense? If the atty doesn’t answer the emails from my atty, how is it legal for me to pay multiple times for them to resend? This has been going on for 2.5 years. I am paying a fortune for this and the other atty doesn’t answer. I was told that after the sep agreement has been agreed upon, my atty had 30 days to file the consent order and qutro. It has been much longer than that. I have to pay them hourly to resend the consent to the atty and if they still don’t respond, I will pay again. They are now raising their fees effective jan 1. It seems I should have some rights as far as acceptable time and cost for this is be completed. Does that make better sense? Thanks.
Delays could be occuring for several reasons: 1) One attorney or the other hasn’t been paid and are waiting on you or your ex to pay their fees before they continue to do new work in the case; 2) It’s some sort of tactic to maybe push this into litigation. I’d say either are possible, but it’s also possible it could be for another reason entirely. If you are truly unsatisfied with the services of your attorney, you should contact them about it first and see what adjustments they might be able to make for you.
Thanks. I’ve tried but they blame the other attorney. I have invested so much money it is unfortunate for me. I just hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else. Learned a big lesson. There are few rights to someone when their spouse cheats on them and drags out the divorce. Doing the right thing doesn’t always pay off in north Carolina with a divorce. Thanks for the responses. I just thought that maybe there was something I could do.
