Gerald W. Hunt

My father set up a special needs trust fund for me with Attorney Gerald Hunt. My father passed away 5/31/2018. The money in the special needs trust fund is still not available to me as of 1/15/2019. I contacted Mr. Hunt by letter in November of 2018 asking for information that was needed for the S...ection 8 program I am enrolled in. I clearly specified the information needed for my Section 8 worker and requested that the information be supplied by 11/20/2018. I received no response. I called Mr. Hunt's office in December, asking to speak to him. I was told he was out of the office. I called twice more before a date and a time was set up for me to talk to Mr. Hunt on the following week. In the meantime I received a letter from Section 8 stating that they needed information from the attorney handling the special needs trust fund in order to process my Section 8 information. When I finally talked to Mr. Hunt, for all of five minutes, he agreed to fax the information to Section 8 in a few days. He transferred me to his secretary to take care of setting up the fax number for Section 8. I also asked his secretary to email me a copy of the information sent to Section 8. I also sent Mr. Hunt an email detailing what exactly was needed to be sent to Section 8. A few days later I received a copy of the information sent to Section 8. The information didn't include the list of what the special needs trust fund couldn't be used for, which was the most important piece of information that needed to be sent. I had specified this in my letter sent in November and in the email sent after I spoke with Mr. Hunt. So I had to contact Mr. Hunt's office again to get that information sent to Section 8. Mr Hunt charges for every contact made to his office. The money comes out of the funds being set up for my special needs trust fund. I am being charged for the November letter that was ignored, the phone calls I made to Mr. Hunt's office and the extra call I had to make so that his office would send the all the information I specified to Section 8. If Mr. Hunt had responded to my November letter, I would not have needed to contact his office in December, calls I will also be charged for. I don't believe this is ethical. In addition, in an earlier bill, I was charged for a phone call to his office regarding a dental bill. This is not accurate. I called to see when I would receive paperwork about accessing a special needs trust fund which Mr. Hunt had told me he would send me at a meeting about my father's will held the first week in June. The secretary told me I would receive the paperwork after the meeting with the trustee which was to be held the next day. Not only is the notation on this earlier bill incorrect, I still have not received paperwork telling me how to access my special needs trust fund when it is finally set up. In letters I have received from Mr. Hunt's office, there have been a number of inaccuracies, including incorrect monetary amounts, incorrect name of one of my Father's accounts which was with Unify Credit Union but was incorrectly called Unity Bank, and address errors. This is not what I would expect from a professional legal office. I live in Minnesota and Mr. Hunt works out of Arizona, which means I can't just make an appointment and go see him and get my questions resolved. He has not been clear, helpful, or responsive, causing me to have to make unnecessary additional contacts which I will be billed for. I read online that the cost for a simple probate is usually $1,500.00. Mr. Hunt's charges are nearly $2,000.00 so far. I would not recommend this lawyer to anyone.