Ralph John Stephan Jr.

I retained Mr. Stephan earlier this year to handle my divorce case. It was a divorce with no children, no debt, and my former spouse and I agreed in advance of how to split our limited assets. He was very nice and courteous throughout my initial (free) consultation. Mr. Stephan indicated that my d...ivorce was extremely simple, and would not take much work. He indicated his rate and his $1500 required retainer. He said that this divorce was not likely to exceed the retainer, and he would not charge me if it went over “by a little bit”. He told me about the required 60 day waiting period required by state law, and noted that the divorce judgment should be done shortly after that. 5 months later, and I just got my judgment of divorce in the mail today, along with a bill for $2470 (less the $1500 retainer I had already paid). This is my first (and hopefully last) experience with an attorney, but I am extremely disappointed that he would mislead me to the cost by charging me 64% more then he estimated. This included hours’ worth of billing for writing up the judgment papers, which he told me ended up not even being used, as he did not include a bankruptcy clause that my ex-spouses attorney asked for. Through all the time I was waiting for action, I had to initiate contact with Mr. Stephan several times to find out what was going on. They had excuses, blaming my former spouse’s attorney, the court, etc. Whether true or not, I was never proactively made aware of anything, and had to call as the weeks and months went by. Maybe my simple divorce was not a priority for them, but they sure seemed to milk it for time and money. At times their office committed to getting back to me for different small matters, but they rarely did. I never felt I knew what was going on. When I came to court, I entered the same time as Mr. Stephan. I said hello to him. He responded “hi” and took off. When I met him outside the courtroom, he admitted to not recognizing me. I didn’t take this personally, but felt this was a microcosm of the impersonal experience I had with Mr. Stephan. While Mr. Stephan and his secretary were very polite and nice to deal with, I feel like I was misled in a couple ways. I couldn’t tell you if this is a typical experience, but wanted to share my story.