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.