Justin Victor Dearmas

After finding a great deal of bias for representation in our small community, our family went out of the area and hired Mr. Dearmas after finding promising reviews online. After a detailed telephone consult, we met with and ultimately hired Mr. Dearmas because of his confidence that our case would be... smooth to handle and his laid backed, down to earth demeanor. Mr. Dearmas was hired to handle a Family Court matter, that has escalated to a trial, where the child was seeking to reside on our custody. Within the first few months and first handful of appearances it became clear that Mr. Dearmas was very difficult to reach when needed or to even get any type of response back within a reasonable time frame. On more than one occasion, we had to outright tell him that we felt as if we were begging for his attention. Though he apologized, it continued. When it came time to conduct the trial, we had provided Mr. Dearmas an abundance of evidence, including mobile communications, social media transcripts, phone records, police reports, volunteered character references, parenting certificates completed voluntarily, a list of witnesses that we requested be included in our trial, school and medical records, certified formal correspondences, and more. From the very start to the conclusion of the trial, Mr. Dearmas proceeded, using NOTHING that was provided to him, and he honored none of our repeated requests to present our evidence and witnesses in support of our defense and in making our own case. During the line of questioning Mr. Dearmas had been provided a detailed, date by date account of our families difficulties with the other party and he failed to ask any significant questions, failed to even challenge the other parties narrative, often times, chose not to question at all, when given the opportunity to cross examine. Given that we had made sure to meticulously document the other parties abusive behavior and all encounters, we should have had a very easy win. Mr. Dearmas continued to sugar coat how we were doing, and skirt around nearly all of the allegations against us. We strongly felt that his representation was essentially serving us no purpose and our family was being portrayed horrendously. The other party was represented by a public defender that was dragging us through the mud. We made formal request to the court to adjourn to seek other representation, and our request was denied. Mr. Dearmas apologized and gave us the majority of our retainer back, but his poor communication with us, and his lack of fair representation, left us in the worst possible position, awaiting our verdict. We deeply regret hiring Mr. Dearmas for a Family Court matter, and after building a relationship with him, feel that Family Court matters are outside the scope of his professional ability and interest. He may very well be a promising, skilled criminal defense attorney, but he had assured us that our Family Court matter would be no problem. That was the farthest thing from the truth and he should have never taken our case, if he had no intention of fairly representing us.