Brave Little Gerda Knows More Now

[Rita]

Does he still have the same lawyer for all these last years? He fired like four of them before settling in on this one I think. Wow, H’s legal bill will be ginormous.

That was me, DnJ!

H has had the same L the whole time, and this guy is trapped now because even he got suckered into going into debt with H. H does that with everyone -- his AP, his business partner, his parents, and of course Brave Gerda. His L hasn't been paid in probably two years. That's why he is so driven to force a sale. He can't put a lien on a buyout!

Why I had three L's before --

My first lawyer never filed any papers at all, let alone on time, then would call me shrieking and crying about her own H trying to commit suicide as she was also going through a D. So I had to fire her, though she was an amazing L for a friend of mine.

Lawyer two I knew because he helped me once with some other legal matter, came to a meeting with me, and he took a divorce call during the meeting and sounded good. He would have been good, had he not taken all the cases of his mentor, who had just had a heart attack. He never filed for child support, never filed for sole use, just charged me to get into screaming matches with H's L. I finally had to fire him because I was literally paying him to do nothing.

I was going to go pro se but decided to try one more time -- once again, someone highly recommended. This guy was $450 an hour, and he seemed to take a full hour to do what took me pro se 10 minutes to do. Over the 2.5 months I retained him, I left with a bill for 20K and NOTHING HAD HAPPENED except he did manage to get an agreement on sole use, but only by me paying H MORE per month.

I was ready to go pro se either way but then Covid hit and it was either pay a lawyer or keep food on the table. So I've been pro se since March 2020 and I did much better for myself than any of these L's, and paid no one. Though the toll on me with time, stress, anxiety and lost work etc has finally become too big of a cost.

I mentioned I would tell the funny story of how I found my new L --

Every time someone says, "Oh, I have the BEST accountant," or "you will LOVE my pest control company/hair stylist/favorite pizza shop," it seems to NEVER be true. So this time around, I just did a google search and read reviews. I picked one guy who had good reviews and made an appointment. On the way to the apppointment a few days later, I searched for his address on my phone and the search went directly to "(my city)SCUMBAG LAWYERS." I'm not kidding. It was all about how he slept with a client, with a lot of extremely gross details, and then she restored her marriage and she and her H sued him!

I almost gave up at that point, but I just knew I was not going to be able to handle this new judge with a clear head, and I was so TIRED -- so I googled again, and literally chose the guy with good reviews who seemed to have the nicest smile and mentioned his kids on his website. Then I had an appointment, and i LOVED this guy. He is totally pragmatic, kind, smart, funny. Turns out he knows H's L -- he told me that he knew him when he worked with a partner who was even more of a sleazeball; this partner stole money from H's L and kicked him out of the firm in some kind of dastardly way.

With my new L, I stick only to the most important facts, and so does he. We spend almost no billable hours going over anything, just trying to get this one order enforced and that's it. He started trying to negotiate with H's L, and I shut that down. I told him we are following the order or going to trial, no more negotiating as it is pointless. And he is a guy who loves to just laser focus on getting a resolution.

So that is the story. And I think it will be a long while before I post again, no one except you, DnJ, even really stops by my thread anymore and I am too tired of my own journey to read the new stories, though I hope all my threads might help someone new and would love to know if they did.

And if any of my old friends is reading this, I would love to hear from my friends on this board IRL. (GORDIE WHERE ARE YOU?!) (And SBJ and Grace and May and Cardinal and Sage and Eagle and Wayfarer and aaaaaaallllll.)

Thanks for all the support, DnJ. Hope your life continues on that gorgeous path through the literal and figurative trees and for some reason I still have some hope for J and you, worked for Hosea..... And you really are this man -- and I have replaced "law" with "Way," as in the Dao, as in the Way and the Life, as in CS Lewis' vision of the Way across space and time --

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the Way of the LORD,
and on his Way he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.