Francesca Madeline O'Cathain

I absolutely would not recommend this attorney. At all. I’m usually not one to give bad reviews. I hired this attorney for a matter pertaining to my then 5 year old son. False allegations were made on me. To which I would later be cleared by multiple agencies, including the NJ AG , where the dcpp cas...e was terminated. This attorney admitted over texts multiple times the judge wouldn’t let us respond to EO or other filings. Which is a very CLEAR violation of due process. Which is every American’s constitutional right right. As a result of her inability to properly ensure my rights, my son was placed with his alleged abuser. And subjected to unnecessary therapy, and alienated from his mom (me). All of which is neither in the child’s best interest & caused direct harm to the child. Unfortunately, Francesca’s inability to ensure my rights (present evidence), contributed to the harm my child faced. While she did not make the false allegations, she absolutely did not fight for me - more importantly my now 6 year old son. On another occasion when it came to child support termination, she again, didn’t care about my due process being violated. I was being forced to pay an amount I could not afford without either parties financials being looked at (again another due process issue). I find it hard to believe this woman has no sense of client’s rights having been an attorney for as long as she has. If you have a family matter, please do not consider hiring her. Find someone who cares about your kid, you, and your constitutional rights. She will gladly take your money while sending both you and your child up the creek without a paddle. The office for billing also seems to not be well organized. I relayed that I would be switching payment methods (as I had used the wrong card). This law firm refunded money. I confirmed the credit card company did not issue the refund & was indirectly threatened with a lawsuit. I have to know. How much gets billed when client’s rights are violated and it’s a minor child that pays the price for that level of incompetence. Damage to the child that can never be undone. Having counsel who cares and knows their stuff, makes a huge difference in court.

I would never recommend either Francesca or Carlye, as my experience with them was that of ineffectiveness, procrastination and extreme inefficiency resulting in high bills and no accomplishments on my behalf, accompanied by repeated deception and poor attitude. I contacted Francesca in late Sep 2023... to help me and my son gain control of my son’s college fund and get my ex to pay child support. Francesca was optimistic, stated that they will get to work on it “right away”, and suggested that she bring on Carlye as it would be “more efficient”. What I was not told is that I will be billed thousands of dollars for Francesca and Carlye talking to each other (conferences they called it, and that is very lucrative for the two of them, but definitely not efficient). I was also not told that it meant that Francesca will dump my case on an inexperienced junior attorney –something I would have never agreed to. Not knowing any better I took her advice. By the end of November, still with no court date or even a motion in sight, my ex hired a lawyer, who, according to Francesca, was going to give us a counter-offer. Francesca suggested we wait to see it, before going to court. I waited for somebody to reach out to me until mid-January, for nearly 2 months, when my ex sent my son’s tuition payment to himself instead of to college. When I texted her, Francesca finally called my ex’s lawyer and discovered that he fired her. I am not sure when Francesca or Carlye were planning to follow-up on the situation if I didn’t text them. At that point, Francesca reassured me that we will be doing to court “very soon” (previously suggesting that in such a situation we can have an emergency court hearing within days). However, neither she nor Carlye pursued an emergency hearing, and did nothing to remediate the situation, leaving myself and my son to fight my ex for the tuition money, but I was billed thousands of dollars for communicating with them about the situation. It took until March to get a motion produced, with the court date eventually scheduled for mid-April. At that point my ex lawyered up again, asking to postpone the court date so they can file counter-motion. While it only took his lawyer a total of 11 days from when he was hired until he completed the motion and submitted it to court, with all supporting documents, my lawyers missed court communications, and with all the other delays on part of Francesca and Carlye we did not get to court until early June, more than 8 months from when I hired them, and at the cost of 4-5 times what my ex paid his lawyer to get to that point. Once we got to court, Carlye proved to be just as ineffective and inefficient in convincing the judge of anything of benefit to me. The summer was spent by her in an unbroken streak of failures to get any results on my behalf or to move the process toward resolution through multiple court appearances, while billing me thousands of dollars. I was left to fight with my ex by myself outside of court to try to get to any kind of an agreement about the college fund and child support, while paying Francesca and Carlye to do who knows what. My ex and I finally came to an agreement, outside of court, with no input from my lawyers. The agreement was written up by my ex’s attorney, who was much more responsive and efficient through that process. I really should have fired Francesca and Carlye at that point and finalized it myself, but I thought that I may as benefit from having access to legal representation. Another mistake. They dragged it out for another 2 months, with the final agreement being identical to the original + changes by my ex that he sent over the day after his lawyer circulated the agreement, but I was charged additional ~ 4500 for their “work”. They did nothing but dragged the process out for over a year, left me to fight with my ex by myself and “efficiently” billed me tens of thousands of dollars. When I brought my concerns to Francesca, she accused me of t

She was the absolute worst lawyer. Doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about your case, she couldn’t even care to write my child’s correct name in an email sent to my ex husbands lawyer. She is terrible. She does not fight for you, she backs down and runs away with her tail between her legs. You’re ...better off representing yourself.