Fired attorney today!!

[jmonez]

well as many of you know from prior post, I have had nothing but problems with my attorney over the last 3mo. He missed my 1st 341 hearing, has been late on all deadlines, lack of info with all files,never returns call or emails, and called and left a message for me to not show up to todays 2nd 341 hearing, because he needs to get more docs in order. What a mess!!! I went to court without him, and pled my case to the trustee, who agreed I have been misrepresnted. He stated my plan is also incomplete and shows a monthly payment of $0, yeah I wish, it also showed I have negative $1400 disposable income??? So I fired him. Now the problem is the trustee gave me another 30 days to get a new atorney or re-file. As I call around it seems all local attornys are super busy and cant meet for 3-4 weeks. I know I will have to also pay a new retainer and filing fee. I hope I get some money back from my previous lawyer. Anyone delt with this before?? I have now lost $3500 in lawyer fees and 3 months of absoulte stress. Sorry, just venting!!

[justbroke]

You need to file with the court to have the lawyer's fee disgorged.

[liz417]

Sorry about your attorney troubles. I started out with an attorney (my 1st consult before I found this forum) exactly 1 year ago. I've been slowly paying his ch 13 fees in payments while learning everything I could about BK. Come to find out, I DID qualify for a ch 7, so when I approached him he flat out told me NO, you don't qualify because you are over the median. Period. I had itemized my expense in the year waiting to file my BK, so I KNEW my expenses exceeded my income, but he would not listen. I received a letter in the mail along with a refund check...he quit the case and "claims" to be out of the office for a couple of months (yeah, right).
The following week, I set up 6 more consults within a 2 week span and most of them told me I didn't qualify for a ch 7 because I'm over the median income (none of them did the means test with me)...only one...and he said I qualified! I retained him that day.

If I were you, I would call you old attorney and tell him you are going to file a complaint with the Bar Association. He will most likely itemize your bill for the work he's done and cut you a check...of course you'll be out your filing fees, but it's better that you got rid of this guy now...

Good Luck!

[beam14]

What is your location?

[AngelinaCatHub]

I agree with Lizz. Threatening to file a bar complaint gets their attention. Have you considered pro se? What I have learned here, for a C7 it is not difficult. Get the C7 book from Nolo press nolo.com for about 17 bucks download in pdf format. All the forms are with it and it is up to date. You can do this. Mostly the lawyers don't do much, their paralegals do the grunt work. You really had a bummer of a lawyer with only his interest in mind. He may have been suspended for two months by the bar. 'Hub

[jmonez]

i'm in northern Ca

[CH33 Paralegal]

The means test isn't just straight up and down your expenses outweighing your income. It takes into account YOUR household size and YOUR county, to figure out acceptable standards that it will credit you. Anybody can spend more than what they earn, but the means test is there to try to differentiate the people that are truly in over their head from the people that are just trying to get off easy. (2 different situations)