Anne Rebecca Fokstuen

I worked with Anne as a translator for a divorce. She was always professional and courteous. She was also punctual and respectful of our time. Anne was careful to ensure not only the client was informed, but understood everything she conveyed. Anne took on the case after it had drew on for quite a wh...ile but her persuasiveness and advocacy brought the case to a swift and positive end. I look forward to working with her again soon.

Ms. Fokstuen came in on the tail-end of my divorce and custody case: she helped me with move-away proceedings (although my ex ended up agreeing to the move early in the process so we didn't end up going to trial), and helped me draft a stipulation, as well as helped me through some difficult situatio...ns that came up. She was very thorough, professional, responsive (always got back to me the same day), and easy to talk to. She is very meticulous and careful about everything. I found her to be very professional and ethical in her dealings with the opposing side--she is not a "shark," rather, she is good at helping you achieve your goals in a grown-up fashion. I found this to be very important in my divorce and custody case as things can already be very difficult and adversarial and having an attorney who dials that back rather than ratcheting it up really helped it move along more smoothly. I really enjoyed working with her and felt very supported and very trusting in her abilities. She is also very caring and showed interest in me and my son as people and focused on what I wanted rather than on "winning." I would highly recommend her.

She is personable and kind, and can make you feel supported in a traumatic time of your life. But that is not the same as being a good lawyer. In my case, she was not well prepared before or in court, and did not write my legal documents professionally. My case suffered and I had to scramble to fi...nd someone better.

Successful 60% of the time but often required many trips back to court for basic outcomes. Simple matters and details that made negative, big differences in our case, were things she would just ignore. She does not represent well in a hearing and her paperwork was often riddled with typos and inaccur...acies. Most organized paperwork was always her bill. She is constantly on vacation, unreachable, disorganized, as expensive as the bigger more skilled firms, and in general just someone I regret working with even though she did have some “wins” (if there is such a thing in family law).

We hired her to process a simple, amicable, no stress divorce to be filed by the end of 2022. She charged $3000. We submitted paperwork in April 2022. She did not submit the second round of paperwork we had signed in October until November. I asked a friend of mine to check and see the Court record a...bout where we were at. The record showed the document for the judge to sign had been rejected on Dec 2. She did not tell us this; rather, in response to our inquiry said “these things can take from 4 weeks to 3 or 4 months”. My lawyer friend told me that these rejections are due to not filling out forms correctly or missing boxes to check!, which when confronted Fokstuen then admitted. My lawyer friend also told me to ask her to backdate the document through a process called “nunc pro dunc”, which she did not respond to. Instead, after our nth reminder, and insistence that this must be completed by Dec 30, 2022, she offered that we could pay a Private Judge” to sign off before the deadline- for more money. We agreed, what else could we do? As I said, a simple process that someone with 19 years of experience should be able to do. But no. Is this her scam? I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt: she’s inattentive, a prevaricator, and incompetent.