Marleena Broekema

Representation under this lawyer could not have been more useless, wasteful and vexatious. I engaged this attorney for a divorce and order of protection matter. For some reason, this lawyer advocated for a second lawyer from her firm which became very costly. The marital asset net worth was well unde...r $200,000 and under this attorney my legal bills swelled to well over $21,000. After months in court proceedings nothing substantive had occurred under her representation and she allowed a relentless stream of malicious occurrences to impact me at the hands of the opposing attorney and opposing party(s). A fairly extensive degree of known-false information had been unlawfully generated and instead of addressing that her expensive representation was implemented as a contemptuous game. She literally allowed the judge to basically force me to be homeless, while living out of my car and separated from my evidence, while paying the mortgage for my house - that was known to be unoccupied - along with paying her extensive legal bills. She then withdrew from my case about three months before trial. The largest billings were for travel time to status hearings and internal strategy meetings and I assumed my case with almost no discovery sought from the opposing party by this lawyer. I literally had almost nothing to go to court with and had to assume my case pro se. It was sickening that almost nothing of any substance had been obtained or secured and I found that the firm had been in possession of extensive defamatory documentation - and said absolutely nothing of it to me.

I was referred to Merel Family Law by another attorney, and even though my matter wasn’t divorce-related, they supported me in pursuing a plenary Stalking No Contact Order. Finding a trusted attorney on short notice was hard, but Laude Hartrum was my main point of contact and took my safety seriously...—communicating clearly and appearing in court within 48 hours. Marleena Broekema was also involved and was professional, prepared, and compassionate throughout.