I initially hired Katie after meeting and feeling a positive connection with her, as well as knowing she had the full backing of Rebecca Long Okura, who has a good reputation. I was in a 20 year marriage that had become controlling and quite rapidly deteriorated.
My then husband and I had made th...e decision in 2001 that I would stay at home with our daughter when she was born. I had no income of my own whatsoever. I had spent time helping out with my dad when he moved here to Utah in 2014, and became his main caretaker after a stroke in 2016 when I was given his power of attorney until his passing in late 2018. Our daughter graduated high school in 2019.
I was given an ultimatum and forced into being the one to file for divorce in early 2020. At the time that I hired her, I felt that Ms. McLain was really going to go to bat for me, as a 20 year unemployed, 55 year old woman, facing off against a husband who made an average of $25,000 per month and had been with the same company for 25 years, and would continue to have that earning capacity.
There are a lot of things that did not play in my favor, the pandemic being one of them, and an attorney that wasn’t aggressive and assertive enough to fight for what was really right for me is another. In the middle of April 2020 we attended 9 brutal hours of mediation and I was convinced to settle for nearly $100K less equity than what a mortgage broker’s comps placed the value of the marital home at, half the monthly alimony asked, no equity in several marital assets, no accounting for my future, my health, my children. Basically, I got hosed. My ex was having the best month of his career to date (I found out later from a co-worker) while he told the mediator that he was going to lose $150K of income in 2020 and was not made to show proof of current income. The best month of his career to date meant something like $40K. In April of 2020, mid pandemic. He had probably the best year of his life, and I paid Ms. McLain nearly $15,000 to walk away with so much less than I deserved. And now, to top it all off he just bought, in August of 2021, a nearly million dollar house without even having sold the previous one. Clearly he has had a change for the better, while less than 1 1/2 years ago he claimed he would not be able to afford to pay alimony and survive himself. I feel that if Ms. McLain had really gone to bat for me, she would have advised me to wait for mediation to take place, even though it was to the point where I just wanted it to be over. Or at least advised me to call his bluff and say I wanted to go to trial and see what might have happened. All of the hours that I spent going over finances, bank and credit card statements, etc, just for her office to charge me to go over the same things, nickel and diming me over emails and phone calls with me and his attorney, even months after the divorce was final.
I am absolutely devastated. All I want to do is get healthy and buy my own little home, start fresh, but I’m still paying medical bills from last year, and am struggling with financing because I don’t make enough. I am left feeling like I should have hired a different attorney, and maybe will have to now, even though I can’t afford to, to get what I should have gotten in the first place if Ms. McLain had lived up to what she had promised from the start.
Bottom line, I would not hire her again, and I really would not recommend her or her firm, as I was told that everything ultimately went through Ms. Long Okura, if you really need someone to fight for you. I feel like there are better attorneys and better firms out there.
