Jon J Arcand

I used Jon for my original divorce, which was uncontested and easy. At the time I paid him a large retainer, though my husband basically looked at the draft agreement and showed up within a week to sign it, totally uncontested. I am now a divorce paralegal and recognize Jon should have returned at ...least half, if not more, of my retainer because he did so little work. There was zero negotiation - he just drafted a boilerplate judgment based on decisions made before I even hired him. I later hired him for a removal cause (removing my child, then a minor from Minnesota) which became contentious but certainly didn't have to. After nearly two years of battling and erosion of my relationship with my ex husband, we finally went to court. The judge had a family emergency and had to leave but made a quick remark to my former husband that unless he had some new information that wasn't in the pleadings, I was moving and he better start negotiating a visitation arrangement. This could have been done two years prior. Jon totally failed to bring the judge's attention to the matter until that day and again, now that I work with divorce lawyers, I recognize it was terrible. Jon was paid tens of thousands of dollars. He never advised me that he could ask for fees from my husband, who earned considerably more than me and was outspending me at every opportunity. In fact, we discussed that my ex husband's strategy was to outspend me. I was paying Jon for many years, even after he got all the equity in my home. I asked Jon for some relief on the fees - something most attorneys will do, particularly if they've made a lot on the case and not moved it through the system very well - and he did not shave a single dime off the total. He knew my financial situation and didn't care. I think he has since retired, but I have not forgotten that his motivation was fees and with all I paid him, more should have been done to wrap the matter up. I feel like he dragged it out deliberately to hang on to a paying client. I will never financially recover from this mess. What's worse - I wanted the removal in my agreement in the beginning and he told me not to bother, that it would be easy to do it later. He never took any responsibility for that terrible, terrible advice. What really upset me the most was that during the negotiations/court at the end, Jon found my family and I at a restaurant near the courthouse and joined us for lunch. My father picked up the tab, including Jon's meal. We did not talk about the case much at all - it was a restaurant and my son was with us. Then Jon CHARGED ME for the time we were at lunch. So, for the honor of having him have a free meal on my dad, I paid like $300. Ugh.