Jeffrey Van Hawkins

Me and my husband hired Jeff for a custody case of our daughters. He had us believe in our first meeting before hiring him that'd he'd help us win our case and the bullying I had went through up until then would end. But In The end that's exactly what he did. He never emailed me back or gave me exact... information on how he was helping and handling our case. And at the final hearing he was more friendly with my ex and his lawyers than he was with me and my husband and threatened to walk out before going into the court room all because I refused to be pressured to do as he demanded which was an unfair situation for me and my husband. I don't believe he ever presented any of my case and my information to the courts and judges. And never truly looked into trying to help me keep custody of my girls. I highly recommend anyone to not hire this man bc you will not be satisfied. He will take your money and never do the work.

My wife and I hired Jeff to help us with a custody battle. He did NOT listen to us, nor did he do anything to help win our case. He sat on all of our info and never presented our case to the courts. Once he realized that he lost our case, before our final hearing, he asked to be paid in full; almost ...$3,000. We told him we cannot pay that much during the holiday season, so he emailed us the following Monday and demanded $500 to be paid by the end of the day or he would drop us. We are now stuck having to defend ourselves and are looking at losing custody of our son. Thanks for nothing Jeff!

Mr.Hawkins defended me on a child support case that lasted almost 3 years.I was being sued for 18 years of back child support.He attended every pretrial hearing on my behalf and always filed an apropiate response to the plaintiffs attorney.He most diffently let the opposition know that we where not s...ettling and we're ready to take this to trial.Resulting in the plaintiff and daughter from withdrawing this lawsuit.Mr.Hawkins was there for me from the beginning to the end.I highly recommend Mr.Hawkins and the entire law firm of Slater and Zurz.

In my three-year long divorce/custody case, the final hearing was rescheduled seven times, the last four times were while Hawkins was my lawyer. The last two rescheduling were to allow my ex-wife's primary witness to testify. The final hearing was scheduled for two days. Per my conversation ...with him (on day two), Hawkins had "car problems" on his way home from work the day before the first scheduled day of testimony in my case. Rather than take his car to a professional repair shop or make other transportation arrangements, he took his car to a "buddy" and they tried (and failed) to fix it themselves. Hawkins was a no-show for the first day of testimony. The Judge cancelled the entire day outright. I was required to pay my ex-wife's witness to reschedule for the following day of testimony. FYI, during conversations over the time he was my lawyer, Hawkins told me that he owns two cars personally, and his firm owns multiple cars. Rather than reschedule an eighth time, the Judge simply refused to allow my two rebuttal witnesses to offer any testimony... and my own time on the stand was limited to less than an hour (by comparison my ex-wife had four hours, and her primary witness had three hours). Hawkins failed to object to any of this. Even during the time I was on the stand, I had given Hawkins a list of issues I wanted to raise... he ignored it. My own testimony was limited to little more than "who are you? what is your background?". All throughout the second scheduled day, Hawkins refused to really discuss anything at all with me during the breaks... even when I demanded to know why he wasn't objecting or asking to reschedule so that my witnesses or myself could actually testify. The only response I could get out of Hawkins the second day was "we'll address the remaining issues in closing arguments"... and when the Judge decided against allowing oral closing arguments, Hawkin's response was "we'll do it in written arguments". A week later, I get a one-line email saying "Judge isn't accepting any further briefing / arguments". This was after paying him over $20,000 to represent me.