Addendum to Separation Agreement

[SingleFather]

Hi everyone, I am new here, I am stuck with a problem and I don't know how to proceed further, so I thought I may ask here for an opinion.

My story is I am divorced 8 years already, my daughters have grown up, one of them is 25 years old, a lawyer herself, almost done, currently in Paris on a foreign student diploma practice of some sorts. She lived on her own for years, completed her first degree and has some job, law related with some business law firm.

The younger one is 16 years old and wanted to leave her mother and live with me for years, but finally this year the situation became unbearable for her, so I decided to get a bigger apartment and take her to live with me.

This was in april this year. I was still paying full child support for both kids.
My ex-wife didn't object, as a matter of fact she seems relieved to get rid of my daughter.

I phoned the FRO, described the situation, they sent me some forms, I filled them out, they contacted my ex-wife, confirmed with her and stopped the child support payments on June 1st as was requested.

So far everything went really great!

Here comes my problem:
In order to get an official document for child custody, we both want a shared custody, I decided to file a simple Addendum to the existing court order for separation, so I can put my daughter on my insurance. The company I'm working for required such document to do that.

So I searched for a lawyer and posted a request on some lawyer website describing my situation. I was contacted by a lawyer and was invited to discuss the case.

I asked him. How much will this cost? He said: $1500 if your ex-wife doesn't object and we don't have to negotiate, if she objects and we have to go to arbitration and it goes back and forth, maybe $500 to $1000 more.

I said ok and gave him $1500. This was in the middle of April. He asked for information about me, got the tax returns for the last three years and told me everything is ok, I will file the documents shortly.

A month and a half went away and on June 5th he sent me an email asking me if I heard anything from my wife and if she is ok with the change.

The problem was she didn't receive ANYTHING from the court or from my lawyer. It turns out he filed the wrong documents or filed them the wrong way and didn't send anything to my ex-wife. So he prepared some new forms and served them to my ex-wife.

My wife responded that she is ok with everything, prepared a financial statement, gave the documents to me and I gave them to my lawyer.

Another month went away. It turns out the lawyer didn't tell my wife to file some form Form 35.1, so the court couldn't proceed.

She was on vacation with her sister in Germany at this time, so she filed the form at the end of August.

No contest, no objections, no negotiations.

Another month went away, so I have sent an e-mail to my lawyer to ask if there is any development.

He responded by sending me a bill of $3000, saying that this are his bills up to July 24th and promised to check if the court has any further objections.

He completely forgot what was settled at the beginning, 6 months went away and I still cannot put my daughter on my insurance and who knows what else
he may come up with.

The bill itself is entirely ridiculous citing charges as $60 to read email from client, $60 to read e-mail from Wife.

I don't know what to do. Should I fire him, can I do this without him?
It is a simple non-contested addendum to a separation agreement.

Any opinions?

[Links17]

I have researched contesting your legal bills. The first place to start is the lawyer deontologicsl guidelinws of your region.

In quebec they actually have pretty strict criteria which have been used to reduce legal fees.
Here are a couple:
1. A lawyer is required to give you an estimate , he did and the doubled it - there was no circumstance which can explain that.

2. The lawyer can't just take his hourly rate and multiply by the # of hours he worked. There is a holistic look at the file that needs to be done taking into consideration the complication of the file.

These rules are for Quebec but probably there are similar rules in Ontario.

[mcdreamy]

In Ontario, not so strict. When he quoted you the $1,500 inclusive, do you recall if he also quoted his hourly rate? How detailed is his initial billing? A separation agreement, uncontested, is I believe anywhere from $2-4 and your proposed addendum is a complete re-write of its most substantial terms.

I think you would have 2 options at the moment:

1) file a change of representation and complete the now hopefully filed material on your own -- you suspect all is complete, no? or;

2) pay the bill, let him finalize, and have his account re-assessed immediately afterwards. In all likelihood, if the court doesn't decrease it, he will agree to negotiate it down.

Frankly, if there is no argument as to custody and access, I am a proponent of self-repping. The forms aren't that user unfriendly if you spend some time and familiarize yourself with the process. I'd finalize the matter on my own, and then have his $1,500 assessed.

[SingleFather]

Yes he said something like:
It will cost you $1500 if she doesn't object and if we have to negotiate, my rate is $300 per hour.

She didn't object, all he had to do is fill out the forms, send them to my ex and file them with court.

He basically let me think that it is a flat rate and sent me in October a bill for some costs that according to him are for his "services" up until July 24.

We never talked about any way how he would present me with the costs. The impression he left was give me the $1500 and I will do it and that would be it.

I still think it is a very dishonest way of doing business like that.

Anyway, thank you all for the responses.

[Links17]

You said it yourself.... He gave you a conditional flat rate and that condition was met.