Susan M Dehncke

I hired Susan to represent me in my divorce. The meet & greet Zoom conference went well. However, Susan ended up representing my wife more than me. Susan advised me much of what I couldn't do and very little of what legal options were available to me. The divorce took nearly 14 months and 4 judges (J...udge Wilson, Judge Grant, Judge Ball, and Judge Kelly). This was a simple asset division divorce. Susan was a reactive lawyer, not a proactive one. She was passive, compromising, nonconfrontational, and took the path of least resistance through the entire process. I finally had to compel Susan to go to court to end the unresponsive stonewalling and last-minute demands prior to trial stalling tactics of my wife's lawyer. I think my wife's lawyer deliberately stalled the divorce proceedings until we drew a judge he knew would be sympathetic to my now ex-wife, and Susan gave him free rein to do so. The lawyers and judges all know each other. I drove 250 miles one way to Jackson and languished 3 hours in the courtroom while the lawyers conferred between us and the judge in private. When Susan Dehncke and I met personally for the first time in court, she didn't even offer to shake my hand. She said: "Oh, you look a lot different in person." Whatever that meant. Susan was unprepared and repeatedly asked for information I had given her multiple times previously. I felt I was nothing to Brandt & Dehncke and the court but a stream of income and assembly line fodder, not as a person. I felt marginalized and unheard. Susan didn't stand up and fight for me. Then I got the final bill from Dehncke for $1,085; for 3 hours in court and 3 minutes in front of the judge. If you're a man being sued for divorce in Jackson County and you don't want your lawyer representing your wife also, pass Brandt & Dehncke on by. And God be with you if you draw Judge Jennifer Kelly.