Cheryl Mcfadden Zak

My husband and I hired Cheryl to do a simple Power of Attorney for my husband and me. We met with her in early February 2021 and filled out all the paperwork. She told us that she needed to send a document to our son in Florida for his signature. She mailed the paperwork to him, but he kept callin...g me (for many weeks) saying that the paperwork never arrived. I tried calling Cheryl multiple times to try to find out what happened. She did not respond to any of my phone calls. It was very frustrating to leave messages on her machine and have her not respond when I knew that something was terribly wrong. She must not have a secretary or receptionist, so instead of speaking with a live person, I had to depend on the messages I left on her answering machine. She finally contacted me and told me that she sent the paperwork to the wrong address. She sent the paperwork out again and our son signed it and sent it back via "return-receipt requested" mail. After paying the extra postage for the paperwork to arrive quickly, Cheryl did nothing with it for quite some time, so I tried calling her again. Once again, she did not get back to me. The only message that she quickly responded to was the one I left on her machine that said that I wanted my money back and that I was going to hire another lawyer. It took over 6 months from the time we filled out the paperwork to finally getting the POA completed. To be fair, once she sent it to the court house, there was a delay in getting the paperwork processed, and that was not her fault. I don't know if the fee she charged was fair or not, but my daughter recently hired a lawyer to handle her and her husband's wills, Living Wills and Health Proxies. She was charge far less for all three documents for her and her husband than I was charged. Cheryl came highly recommended by our previous lawyer who retired. I was very disappointed with the way everything was handled for my husband and me. I would not recommend her due to her lack of follow up to her voicemail messages. It was very frustrating dealing with her when she was so non responsive to us.

I have paid Cheryl almost $30,000 for a divorce. She made a huge error on identifying marital assets. She incorrectly read a brokerage statement and added all of my IRA's twice. The IRA's represented 60% of my overall investments and that number equaled a 200% increase over post martial cash availabl...e to my ex. The problem was compounded by Cheryl throwing out settlement numbers based on the error and then not disclosing how she arrived at her settlement figure. It took two years to finally get her to submit paperwork to the court explaining her figures. When the mistake was found she was promptly terminated. There was also an occasion when talk of a settlement was in the air but needed to be completed by a specific deadline. Cheryl lost her phone a week before the deadline. She could not be reached by phone, fax, email and was not seen in person. She only informed everyone after the deadline passed that she lost her phone and there was no explanation of why she didn't find an alternate means of communication. I would not recommend Cheryl for legal work. She is incompetent or she is unethical. Being able to correctly access assets and communicate with opposing attorneys is divorce law 101. I believe she purposely dragged out litigation for her own financial gain.