Harold Brienes

I found Harold to be very friendly and eager to help upon meeting him. My ex-wife and I were looking for an amicable resolution and decided to mediate to save money. I found that this mediation process quickly became very expensive and found myself and my ex-wife having to repeat ourselves many times... about pre-decided topics. Several times we felt that Harold was going beyond his boundaries regarding our decisions on how to split property and some assets. Also, for child support I later found out from a different attorney the guidelines were incorrect and that I was overpaying nearly $100 a week! After meeting with a separate attorney I had to go through the process to amend the guidelines and even the judge in court agreed that I had been overpaying for the amount of time my child was spending with me. This mistake turned out to be costly for me, in the form of several thousand dollars. There were also many grammatical, math, and oversight errors that I found during the process. I would recommend spending the money for separate attorneys to draft an agreement, which doesn't mean you can't already agree on certain topics.

I went through a particularly challenging Divorce about a year and a half ago. Divorce is rarely easy, particularly when young children are involved. It’s further complicated when the divorcing couple are not on the same page, as usually one person wants to get out, and the other is left feeling like... a victim. In these cases, it can take a Herculean effort to get to ‘yes’, and you need the right person to help you navigate there. If Divorce is a mountain standing between you and your court date, there are a lot of pathways you can take, to get over, around, or through it. Having worked with and or seen how other attorneys handle various divorce matters pertaining to myself as well as others going through similar situations, I can say with some perspective that Harold is top-drawer - a cut above the rest, possibly gifted in his profession. Harold is very experienced, extremely intelligent, and great with people of all walks. He is very sensitive to both people’s feelings, and works without bias to get to a fair result. Harold will tell you which is true, that neither person will come away getting everything they want. He works from a base understanding centered on what is important to each of you. His decades of experience provide the benefit of a most astute prescience to make sure that your agreement is sufficiently thorough and moreover, considers future issues to avoid problems down the road. I can’t stress this enough, not being thorough can make the difference between a new beginning with peace of mind stemming from appropriate guard rails in your agreement, vs heading back to court because your agreement wasn’t clear, or fair, or didn’t have enough legal ’teeth’ to firmly establish various matters to the court. I have seen other mediators help friends going through divorce, and I’ve seen the difference in Harold’s approach. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. Divorce isn’t cheap, but the process, and results are way, way too important to put into the wrong hands. I don’t plan on every getting divorced again myself, but I have to say I highly recommend him, and have recommended him to others in need of his services.

My now ex-husband and I found Harold after we had a very bad experience with another divorce mediator. Either though Harold came into our case in the middle of the process, he was able to immediately help us out with several pressing issues and took over our case seamlessly. We asked for unbundled se...rvices, since we had a few documents already done and submitted with the court. Harold handled the rest of our case with great care and attention to detail. We were impressed with the understanding and knowledge he had, and we were grateful he was able to advise us on many points we didn't understand. On our court date, the judge was very thorough in asking us about the details of our divorce agreement. So we were very grateful to Harold that our document was so well written so that we were able to respond promptly and accurately to the judge. Thankfully everything went pretty smoothly despite the long wait and the many questions we had to answer. We are very thankful to Harold for his help and would definitely recommend his great services to anyone who is in the unfortunate situation of divorce and needs help and legal advice through this difficult process.

Besides the overall fear, anxiety, sadness (anger) and emotional rollercoaster that a divorce can bring on it can much worse during litigation process with each side arming themselves with costly lawyers that more often than not, drags on a divorce process and creates a hostile environment. Especiall...y when children are involved, this type of divorce litigation is by nature designed to cause extreme emotional and financial harm. I had the unfortunate experience of going through a divorce recently and I was very scared, uninformed and emotionally drained. I spoke with several “divorce” attorneys who believed that the best course of action is the one that would cause the most harm to my spouse both financially and emotionally. I quickly realized how this approach would also cost both of us any chance of an amicable future relationship along with an incredible amount of money; money that was ours and money that we had set aside for our children. It was sickening to think of what could have happened if I had not found Attorney Harold Brienes and learned about the Collaborative Divorce Process of which he is an expert. Harold told me from the first day I met him that the hopes at the end of this process was that I would be able to “dance with my x-spouse at my daughter’s wedding”, -that we would remain friends and we would both walk away from this collaborative divorce process feeling that there were no “losers” and neither side felt the other got a better deal than the other. Harold talks about “Resolving Disputes Respectively” and he created and nurtured the most respectful, caring and thoughtful divorce process well beyond my expectations. We talked about my children, we talked about my spouse and we talked about me and what I expected from all of this. Feelings became expectations and expectations became my goals for a divorce that was fair to both parties. More so, I did not want my spouse, my children or I to suffer emotionally anymore than we already were feeling. Actually, my hope was that Harold would find ways to soften the emotional elements that make traditional divorce litigation so often cruel and mean towards each other. Well, I can emphatically say that in terms of a divorce, mine went as well as a divorce could possibly go and that is truly the result of this amazing and kind gentleman, Attorney Harold Brienes. Actually, it went well beyond my expectations. Today, I am dear friends with my x-spouse, something I did not think possible. The collaborative divorce process left both my x-spouse and I feeling that neither of us came out of the divorce unfairly in terms of the financial asset divisions. I suppose most important to both my x-spouse and I was that our children did not suffer. Our desire was to display “kindness, respect and integrity” during the divorce towards each other and we learned these very lessons from Harold. No one truly walks away from a divorce feeling joy. It’s sad no matter what the situation might be. However, with an attorney like Harold Brienes, one can walk away from a divorce feeling that no one suffered unfairly, that kindness and respect ruled the process and that I can indeed “dance at my daughter’s wedding with my x-spouse”. That is truly the miracle that attorney Harold Brienes created and nourished. I highly recommend Harold and you are free to call me personally for additional information about Harold at 203.414.1559.