Edward Bernard Batista

My experience with Edward Batista was very negative. I was one of three trustees and the lawyer for the problem trustee, who is known to be a pugnacious attorney, floated the idea of a private fiduciary. I expressed interest in this but Edward Batista, despite knowing what kind of people the other tr...ustee and lawyer were, dismissed the option outright saying “I would only go that route if we were in a quagmire.” It turned out to be a case of self-fulfilling prophecy because Edward Batista led me into a quagmire that took 16 months and tens of thousands of dollars to resolve (ultimately with another attorney representing me). The kicker was that two months later before the hearing, Edward Batista approached me about a private fiduciary as if he had come up with it de novo. Not only that but Edward Batista failed to notice two of the beneficiaries (the other lawyer knew the trust better than Edward Batista, even though it was written by Edward Batista), which allowed the problem trustee to continue squatting at the real property for 45 more days and wasted a hearing. Moreover, Edward Batista is sloppy in his record keeping, he lacks attention to detail, and his work is of poor quality. (Every document he produced for me had mistakes and typos.) Here is an example of a very serious error he made on one of my grandmother's important legal document, where I have anonymized the names: "If conservatorship of the principal's person or estate, or both, is deemed necessary, the principal hereby nominates , as conservator of the principal's person or estate. If is unable or unwilling to serve, I nominate Person A Person B as my conservator." Where I have replaced the actual names with Person A and Person B. So here we have a paragraph in a finalized, binding legal document where there is a blank for the person named as conservator of the principal's person or estate and two names run together as successors. That paragraph was never invoked but even so that is a completely unacceptable error and Edward Batista's work is replete with such errors. And there were times I would correct Edward Batista and he would ignore me and still get things wrong. In summary, I believe Edward Batista advised me in his own interest, not in my interest, nor in the interest of the trust and he displayed gross incompetence while I retained him as an attorney. For these reasons I must caution others against hiring him for any matter.