Marilyn Jean Palumbo

Extremely pleased with our experience with the services Marilyn offered. Marilyn took time to listen to our delicate family situaton, did not feel rushed and allowed all the time needed to give details of the situation. She went through options that are available and different scenerios, so we would ...understand our decision based on law. She's very knowledgable, wise and experienced in Family Law.

I hired Marilyn as my attorney for the most cordial divorce ever. My ex and I actually sat down and filled out all of the paperwork together. That said, every step of the process was extremely delayed until I called or emailed to complain and magically things would progress. Of course, the other a...ttorney was blamed. She'll probably state that it was the other attorney in her response to this. So, let me provide further exemplification. Finally, the divorce documents were sent to court in May 2015, 11 months after hiring her. I followed up in July, August, and September. Finally by October 2015, I emailed that it was WAY beyond the time duration for a divorce to be processed. Again, after receiving my email, she called me to tell me that it had been "misplaced at the courthouse" and not put in her "appropriate mailbox". I'm fairly certain if I hadn't followed up, I would still not have the decree. I arranged a time and date that I'd pick up my divorce decree and pay the remaining amount owed. I arrived to her office (45 min away from me) to find the office doors locked (which was during office hours). The paralegal let me in, and I let her know who I was. She had NO idea who I was or what I was there for. Seeing how disappointed I was, she searched and some how found my divorce decree. I picked it up, and she asked how much I owed. At that time, all of the work was complete, so I should've had a proper bill waiting for me. Unfortunately, she had no idea what I owed and I paid, thinking I overestimated the amount of work, only to be billed 3 months after paying this final amount. Furthermore, upon reaching my car, I opened the divorce decree to find out I'd been divorced SINCE JULY 2015. So, if you are looking for someone professional to handle your case in less than 15 months without having to haggle them at every step of the process, I'd go with someone else.

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.