Peter Glenn Gierut

I should start by saying our best case scenario going into court was to have the case dismissed, and Peter got that done for us on the first day (when another lawyer said the court would meet with us for a few minutes, and set a future trial date). The amazing thing is that getting the case dismissed wasn't even the best thing that Peter did. My fiancee had been separated for a long time, but had not filed anything with the courts. The Monday before Thanksgiving, her ex didn't show up for the meet-up to hand off the kids to her. He said they were sick, and then stopped answering calls. After driving to his house and a hospital, thinking there was some emergency, it was the middle of the night before we found a police officer who was able to tell us he had filed a temporary order of protection. They gave us a paper with some information, and told us documents would be served in the next day or two. I mention this so anyone reading this understands how I ended up spending Friday after Thanksgiving calling every lawyer I could find, hoping one would be available for a hearing at 8:00 AM the following Monday. I hired Peter, not because I knew anything about his qualifications, but because he was the only lawyer I could find who was willing to show up to court the Monday after Thanksgiving, presumably after cramming for the case all weekend. Peter showed up for the hearing early. He knew all the pertinent details, and he was professional. More importantly, he won the case. When I say winning the case was not the best thing he did for us, that's not hyperbole. Neither my fiancee, nor her children, live in Illinois. We hadn't discussed her filing for divorce, but it had obviously become inevitable. I don't think either of us considered where the divorce would happen. (When they were married, they lived in Iowa. We still lived in IA, and the children spent the majority of their time with us.) After winning our case, Peter told us my fiancee should file for divorce ASAP. We said we would. Peter said he wanted to be clear he wasn't talking about filing before too many days passed by. He was talking about filing before too many minutes passed by. He told us that he couldn't represent my fiancee, because it would be prohibitively expensive to hire a lawyer two hours away, but he offered to file the divorce papers. He explained that, if my fiancee's ex filed first, he would file in IL. Eventually, we would probably succeed in convincing the courts the divorce belonged in IA, but we would spend thousands doing that. If we filed first, we would file in IA, and probably wouldn't have to fight that battle. He drafted the divorce papers, and filed them in less than 1 hour. Throughout the 2 years of divorce that followed, my fiancee and I talked about how important that advice was. When you have 3 lawyers and 2 paralegals copied on dozens of e-mails about things as trivial as a missing lunchbox, you realize divorces are almost as much about how much you are willing to spend as they are the fact that you're actually the better parent. Saving thousands fighting about which state the divorce should happen in was huge, given what little money we had left after 2 years. Peter's rate was $25 higher than our IA lawyer, but his billing was less for calls they were both on, because he didn't overstate his billing like the other lawyer.

He fixed all the damage that a less experienced lawyer created on my divorce/ custody case. I went from supervised visits to joint custody. He's not very prompt with returning urgent phone calls.. But when it matters in court he is well prepared and knowledgeable. Very respectful and honest to clients as well. Definitely worth the money!