After several months of going pro se in my custody modification suit I was able to secure funds to hire an attorney 3 weeks prior to trial. I met with him once, brought him all my filed documents and informed him that I had not provided the opposing side with financial disclosure. He requested I email his paralegal all my financials and I did that two weeks prior to trial and informed her that I did not file with the court the mandatory disclosure form or child support guidelines, nor had my ex done so.
I tried, almost daily, to get in touch with this attorney and only got his paralegal telling me "not to worry, everything is being taken care of and I'm in good hands."
The day before the trial I met with him and he informed me that he was filing a motion for continuance to get more financial disclosure from my ex, as we had only received his interrogatories but no bank statements, tax returns, etc. He said based on the fact that he just taken over the case, he was 99.9% sure the judge would approve the continuance and to "rest assured", we had a "slam-dunk" case.
We showed up to court the next morning and he asked me for my financial disclosure and I told him that I had given it to his paralegal two weeks prior.
When session began, the judge addressed the motion for continuance and said she had to deny it because my attorney never had me sign the document. ??? So, trial went on.
From there it just went down hill. OC addressed the fact that I never produced mandatory disclosure so the judge imputed my income. My ex, a bar owner, didn't provide his disclosure either and his statement for monthly income of $1300 was accepted by the judge.
As I was being grilled on stand, evidence that I had given my attorney to support my case was not presented ... he objected to nothing and my proof just sat in his folder.
Needless to say, I lost big time. My attorney couldn't even look at me.
OC was awarded responsibility for drafting up the final order for the judge to sign. This was over 2 weeks ago. I have no idea when this order goes/went into effect, how much my new child support amount will be (if any at all now), and the rest of the details of the 26-page parenting plan.
I left message after message for my attorney asking for a de-briefing and next steps. I was finally able to set up a meeting with him last week, but when I showed up they said he wasn't available and passed me on to a new attorney in their firm. None of them seemed to know if she would be representing me now or him or someone else??? After promises of getting answers from them the next day, it is now the end of next WEEK and still no one has given me any answers. His paralegal actually told me to call the judge's office myself and see if I could find out why OC hadn't submitted the proposed final order yet since she wasn't responding to them either.
OK, so now the questions ...
1. Do I have any recourse on the issue of him failing to have me sign the continuance and financial disclosure not being provided to OC?
