Gerald W. Adams

Mr. Adams did not prepare me for my divorce; this was my first divorce and hopefully my last. 1.) Leading up to the mediation, Mr. Adams did not call a preparation meeting; I had to. 2.) The Friday before the mediation, I went to Mr. Adams' office with the expectation of being walked through what to... expect during the mediation; what was going to be covered, in what order, what our game plan was going to be, etc. Because Mr. Adams did not have my financial affidavit completed, we spent 1.5 hours working on it instead; we didn't even get close to discussing tactics and baselines. I had to return to work and the affidavit was still not completed. 3.) The day of the mediation, we still did not have any game plan or baseline. As a result, opposing counsel determined the course of the conversation re: alimony and child support. Because we had not reviewed the affidavit prior to the mediation, I did not have a chance to vet the offer by opposing counsel and during the mediation, I agreed to the offer. In retrospect, Mr. Adams should have ensured that we had met prior to the mediation, or rescheduled the mediation, to ensure that I knew what I could afford. While I accept my share of the responsibility for not asking for a postponement, and the decision to sign the mediation agreement, I do not feel as though I received the guidance from a paid professional who, from experience should have (in my opinion) rescheduled the mediation, or ensured that we had a discussion about what I could afford prior to signing the mediation agreement. 4.) The child support amount, as it turns out, was an amount that opposing counsel offered; Mr. Adams did not have a completed child support amount in front of him (or me) to refer to. Only during a follow-up meeting; at Mr. Adams' office, did I learn (as we continued to labor through his software) that I may very well have been overpaying child support by almost $400.00/month, and that the monthly income amount on the financial affidavit might have been over-stated by as much as $3,000. 5.) During the follow-up meeting, Mr. Adams and I spent 2.5 hours updating and completing my financial affidavit to reflect the various agreements from the partial settlement. Mr. Adams continued to demonstrate that he did not know how to use his software well. There were many instances during this second meeting, that I had to help Mr. Adams use his own software. (In fact, during the first meeting, Mr. Adams called the Software helpdesk and they could not help him, because he was encountering a user error, not a software error.) While I did get a refund for 2 hours of Mr. Adams' time for this second follow-up meeting, the amount of my time that was wasted helping a paid professional like Mr. Adams figure out his own software was both very frustrating and professionally unacceptable. I truly feel as though I have spent several thousands of dollars on very poor service & support, and in turn will cost me more money as I have since transferred to another attorney. The opposing counsel was prepared, had a plan, and did well for their party during the mediation. Now I'll need to spend more time and money trying to get back to a fair deal. 6.) Towards the end of my work w/ Mr. Adams, I sent pension information to Mr. Adams' office on 12/1/14; that was to have been forwarded to opposing counsel; it never was. The feedback from my ex-wife's counsel was that Mr. Adams was not timely in his responses; 7.) While Mr. Adams is a nice person and easy to talk to, his actions did not seem to demonstrate that he had my interests at heart.