Jonathan E. Edwards

He has a lot of experience and knows what he is doing, after the whole mess my settlement was good. But I would only recommend him if you WANT a fight. He is very combative which can be a good thing in certain situations, but I regret having retained him. Some examples: When asked how much this woul...d cost his answer was “the retainer is XXX” the divorce ended up costing me 3 times that. He did not explain that possibility, he just kept saying how easy and quick it was going to be. Instead of writing my ex a letter offering to do a collaborative divorce he went with the serving papers route, which made her angrier and things got nastier, bad advice to follow. He kept telling me how easy the divorce was going to be (no children, similar salaries) and when I asked how long it would take he said 3 months, he had to know that was not possible. It was about 4 months to just get to the preliminary hearing… then covid hit so after that is not his fault, but even before Covid it was almost impossible to get a divorce done in less than a year in NY. He blatantly lied to me about timing. This was probably the worst part. Early in the divorce I got a job offer in another state, I asked for advice about taking it, he said “sure go ahead, you have no kids”. This gave my now ex wife a weapon to play games and delay as much as she could, because she knew I had to pay both mortgage and rent in the new place. Aren’t lawyers for giving good advice???? He kept telling me after every meeting with the judge’s clerk how it was “done” but there was always another meeting and more negotiations (and more billing). This is not all his fault, my ex wife was butthurt and wanted to extend this over forever to hurt me financially. But I am sure he did not mind the extra hours billed, if he is so knowledgeable why didn’t he warn me this could happen from the beginning? Why keep telling me that “it’s done”? After all, all she got out of me was 1% of the house (we split it 51/49) so the outcome ended up being positive, again he knows what he is doing and he knows how to fight for you, so if this is your thing by all means go with him. But if you can mediate or have a more reasonable/collaborative divorce don’t follow his advice.