Howard Atkin

I am giving an unbiased review of the recent experience we had in the hope that I can save another person from the problems we have experienced. First of all, emails are never really answered promptly so make sure you call. Before we went to court we gave Mr. Atkin clear evidence to use in a child su...pport case. When we went to court, Mr. Atkin did not object nor clearly define our case and present the evidence which would have rendered a verdict in our favor. As a result we are paying child support beyond when we should have to and having to go back to court once again. This is an attorney who is obviously overloaded and did not pay attention to the details. If you have a child support case, I would consider going to another attorney.

DO NOT use this attorney. He showed up to court numerous times utterly unprepared. In a seemingly simple and straight forward case, he completely neglected to provide the requested documents to the opposing sides attorney weeks before the court date as required to do so. Since we gave the the request...ed documents to Mr.Atkin as requested, we only assumed he would have given them to the opposing sides attorney. He did not! All this was discovered in front the Judge! It destroyed our case. It was so very obvious that the judge had no respect for Mr.Atkins even before this last episode of his being constantly unprepared. We lost, as we did each time he took us to court. We also had to pay attorney fees for the other side, because he did not prove our case. It was a very simple one the last time. My husbands daughter moved in with us permanently. He did not file the appropriate documents with court, and told us to stop paying child support. This put my husband in contempt of court, and put us in a defensive posture before the court. My husband had never once been late on a payment. We continued to pay child support for nearly 8 months after the child moved in with us, the whole time paying the mother the monthly child support for which Mr.Atkin assured us we would get the money back. The reason we did not get it back was because he failed to do the proper paper work and also did not give the documents the ex-wife's attorney requested, which we had completed and returned to him weeks prior. When the judge asked him why he had not provided them, he simply stated he forgot! Everyone is human, but this is only one example of all the many many other items he forgot, didn't do, did not know to do, did incorrectly.. etc... He was also very bad about getting back to us. His rates were very low compared to most other attorneys in town. My husband used Mr. Atkins over a 3 year period. We finally fired him last year after the last issue above. He is a seemingly nice, likable person. Perhaps this was why my husband kept him too long.