Noelle Therese Gaston

RUN AS FAST AND AS FAR AWAY FROM THIS LAW FIRM AS YOU CAN (Noelle Gaston & her husband Chris Biely)!!! I'm just trying to save you the extra money, time, and trouble we've been through. We hired Noelle Gaston, this law firm, December 2021 and paid $1500 up front for filing fees and publications. It w...as a simple probate case (1 house, all siblings in agreement, and my husband as administrator). We were going to buy the house off of the estate for appraised value as it was passed down generations (None of the siblings wanted to get rid of it.) Noelle made us hire a real estate agent, I found one, which we had to pay a percentage of the sale price to. The agent opened up the escrow and I already had my own lender, all 3 of which I worked closely with, several times a week. Financing fell through at the last minute. My husband called Noelle and told her the 4 siblings wanted to keep the house in the family, even if 3 of them needed to sign over their portion to him. She said that would be different from the CA regulated probate fee, my husband asked if she had a ballpark $, she said No, he told her "I'm not rich and I can't just willy nilly let you run away with hours." This is when it all started. On 12/27/2022 She backdated $2,585 of extraordinary fees and applied them to our case, even after a meeting we had where she said she hadn't done anything extraordinary yet, and before she did she would let us know. Some of these charges included reading emails she was just CC'd in as an FYI. When we contested the charges with her she said: this was a min charge, we could either pay the $2,585, or if we continued to contest it she would seek $4,180. When we told her we wanted the court to decide the extraordinary fees (I had several consults with other local and CA probate attorneys, who agreed these extraordinary fees were excessive), she refused to file the last court document of the probate. She then said communication had broken down between us and wanted us to voluntary sign to relieve her as counsel. We told her we just wanted to finish with her because it was almost done. She filed a motion to be relieved and charged us another $1,100 for filing it. I hired another local probate attorney to finish. He asked her for our remaining $466.89 of the fee we paid in the beginning to file the last step, she refused to give him OUR MONEY, so we had to pay another $500 filing fee and also additional fees for representation. Her extraordinary fees at this point were over $7,000. Court ordered mediation for the fees, we paid her $1966.89 in extraordinary fees, statutory fees, and the new lawyer’s fees because we just wanted to be done (after almost 2 years) with probate and try to move forward from the death of a loved one.

My father was clearly being taken advantage of by a woman half his age. What he thought was a whirlwind romance turned out to be a scam. He had sold his long-time home in California and purchased a house in Texas. When he decided to file for divorce it was discovered that she had forged a note “gifti...ng” her sole ownership of the home, leaving him only the bills for the newly purchased furniture and appliances. My father had relocated to live with me and my husband in California. I was looking for an attorney who would be sensitive to my elderly father’s needs. I called several firms who would not touch the case being that the wife and the property were in Texas and the divorce was to be filed in California. I finally found The Law Office of Christopher S Biely and spoke with Noelle Gaston. She immediately said she could help my dad. The case became more and more involved as the opposing counsel grew increasingly argumentative and uncooperative. He would appeal every decision and threatened sanctions when things did not go his way. At no time did Noelle ever lose her composure. She maintained her professionalism in the court room and with all interactions even has he grew more belligerent. She was always understanding of my father's needs and ensuring he understood what was going on. Thanks to Noelle, we were successful in proving the fraudulence of the deed from the now ex-wife and were able to recover my father's property, his life savings. I would highly recommend the Law office of Christopher S Biely for your family law needs.