My attorney wrote me, 'We completed a closing and the deal fell thru at the last second.'
The closing obviously was not completed. I paid for a closing of $500. It does not matter how much work the lawyer did. The outcome for which I paid did not happen.
The huge issue in this whole process... was my neighbor had a garage that was on my property line for nearly 30 years. This is how the attorney handled this issue.
After weeks of back and forth with the neighbor asking him to remove the garage, he my neighbor refused, or did not have the money to move it. He asked the attorney to send him a formal letter to move the garage. I also asked her to do this for him; to write a formal letter. There was never a formal letter sent to my neighbor.
At the last minute, the lawyer's representative even went so far as to visit my neighbor whose garage was on my property. The paralegal went over, yelled at my neighbor, and pretended to be a lawyer at first, then changed her wording afterwards.
Marilyn, told me to put the garage on craigslist to have it removed. I did as she asked. I only received hate emails from my neighbors family and friends. I could feel the hate through my walls. And a no trespassing sign was put on the garage by my neighbor. I just wanted to leave this house behind and all the heartache that I suffered while living in NY.
I was told that my closing could not go through if the garage was not removed from my property line. However after waiting several extra weeks, the closing went through for the second buyer. Which that whole process baffled me.
Trying to make me feel humbled by saying that my mother 'would be appalled at your treatment of me (lawyer)' is unprofessional to say the least.
Stating "we provided you with excellent service" when I don’t even have in writing the 'letter they sent' to my neighbor stating that 'you have x days to remove the garage from the G*** property'? Because there was no letter? There was only a map of my property lines were sent to my neighbor.
I also had to contact the town and county on my own, because I wanted to get to the bottom of this situation with the garage.
The town and county knew about the garage, but refused to do anything about it.
There was never a permit issued for the garage.
What about your claim that your lawyer wanted to be paid her fee BEFORE the closing took place? I have a feeling that she wanted that $500 for the first 'closing that was to make sure she would be paid twice. THAT was the moment to ask her, "Why do you want to be paid $500 for a closing? I refused to give her a check before the second closing took place. She still removed the money from my final check from the sale of my house. I told her that it was extortion. That she would not finish my closing without me paying her twice. I was actually scared through this whole situation.
There was NO closing for the first buyer who backed out of the deal. I should not have had to pay twice. This was not my fault, what happens if I had several closings back out. I would have had to pay and pay and pay. If I had known this from the very beginning, I would not have hired this attorney.
I also asked the lawyer to send me a detailed bill of the cleaning fee the new buyer charged me. I never got one.
I also felt that when she handled my mothers death, that her bank account was never closed, so we lost around $500 from that account. ($500 to my mother took her months and months of hard work to save and have it disappear out of my mothers account, is not fair) Marilyn did not seem to do much to close my mothers accounts, the executor did it all. Marilyn just held onto the death certificates. So at the end of life, you as an executor really must not need an attorney. Marilyn charged my family $1500 to do what. I am not really sure.
Marilyn Palumbo
Replied last July 27, 2015
Unfortunately, you can not please everyone. This is a situation of a client who is incapable of understanding what is involved in a real estate matter or in an estate. My office worked so diligently on each of her cases, and this posting is so riddled with blatant lies it is difficult to even respond to. The bottom line is we did everything we could for this client and she still was not happy. We try to make each and every client happy, but sometimes that is just an impossibility.