Patricia Joan Chvatal

I worked with this attorney twice in 2019 and 2023 . Two of my close friends did too so I have a very good experience and knowledge about her and her practice . The best I can summarize it : Pat had her stardom in the old past but not anymore . She will promise you a lot but once you hire her s...he will change her position quickly. To make things worse, she has been having memory gaps probably because of her age . She will forget details of your case and in my situation went on vacation while she had scheduled a court date only to find myself with no representation . Pat should retire , period ! Her billing practices are also questionable where work done by her staff is billed at her hourly rate . Not only that , after paying hefty amounts you will have to review documents because in my case , I found major errors in names ( yes she listed different couple name on my case ! ) , who the petitioner is vs defendant , and on and on . Save Your self time and money and look somewhere else . Good luck in your search .

I had no knowledge of divorce proceedings and what to expect. Even though I was against getting a divorce, my divorce was non combative and non confrontational. However, I was set up with the worst parenting plan, and divorce decree imaginable. Of course I didn't find out until it was too late. Fo...r example, I was literally advised against 50%-50% shared custody that my X and I agreed to. Instead, Pat Chvatal set me up with 50%-50% shared visitation, and told me it was the same thing. Unfortunately, I believed her since I was paying her to advise me. In addition, to the parenting plan, medical premium credits in the child support worksheet were not given. For as easy as my divorce was there should never have been such poor service. Her services ended up costing me more than it should have (thousands $$- years down the road), and less time with my children. My advice is to trust yourself, and not your attorney. Your attorney does not know what is best for your children. If you love your children get 50/50 shared custody, and not 50/50 visitation or even joint custody (there is a difference). Be active in your children's lives, go to parent teach conferences, school events, med,dent, and optical appointments, sports events, dinner events, vacations etc., and document everything you do in a journal. 50/50 shared custody is the best and healthiest custody agreement for children as well as dealing with the X. There is tons of documentation supporting this.

I had a conference with this lawyer in regards of a divorce process. She gave me tons of false hopes simply to get the business and start draining me financially. She will charge $200 flat rate even for secretarial work! I got her assistant to do some forms for me and even before filing I alre...ady have been charge close to $1,000 Luckily I ran into a friend that had used her in the past for a child custody case and told me to drop her immediately. He paid her close to $5,000 and nothing got resolved. Stay away from this lawyer at any cost unless you have tons of time, patience and money.

My initital visit she seemed to quickly understand the issues and its complexity and was very clear with me what needed to happen next. Within two days I provided the items she needed. Then the waiting began. No returned phone calls, and no returned e-mails and when I tried to make an appointment ...I was told the first available was 3 weeks away. For nine days I heard nothing from her. There was time sensitive materials to follow through on. My support people encouraged me to sit her in her lobby until I could meet with her. I did just that.. I sat in the lobby for approximately one hour. She came in and out of her office passing me every time. She chatted with her staff around the corner, where I could hear her talking about vacations, food and misc. topics. As she was going into her office a third time she asked me what I was doing in her lobby. I asked her a few questions and I asked her if what she had agreed to do got done. She then yelled at the legal secretary to write up to two letters. In one of the letters there was a deadline involved where action on the other party was required. I e-mailed on the day after the deadline inquiring if the party had responded. No return e-mail. I waited a few days and e-mailed again. No response. I called. No response. Finally 10 days after the deadline, after calling every hour, she took my call at around 3:00 pm. For 30 minutes she called me "stupid" nearly every sentence. When I asked questions about the deadline for the other party, she said like "Are you so stupid to think they were going to respond because of my deadline?". I had three other questions I needed answered. With every questions the response was something like "that is such a stupid question" or "you are so stupid to even be asking that question", I can't believe how stupid you are." There were items she asked me to follow through on and she told me how to follow through on them...she was very specific. I had followed through and she told me I was so stupid in the way I dealt with her requests from our initial, and only meeting. Then when I would let her know how I understood what she said in our initial meeting she yelled, "Don't you twist my words! I know what I said and didn't say. I don't need you to tell me what I said. I have a perfectly good memory!" She continued to yell and then she said "if I wasn't so stupid and did what I did there wouldn't even need to be legal proceedings."...close to those exact words. She kept telling me she couldn't believe how stupid I am, all the while yelling. At one point I told her that I was not stupid and in order to move foward she would have to get clear that I am not stupid. She then offered to outline in yellow highlighter all the stupid things I have said and done and written. I told her I would like her to do that and then she changed the subject. I came back to the subject of her highlightling in yellow the stupid things she thought I had done and written. She then said she would never do or put anything like that in writing. Then she asked me if I thought she was stupid and yelled something to the effect of "I would never be so stupid to do something like that. You are so stupid to think I would put anything like that in writing." This went on for 30 minutes of which I got an answer to only one question of my four questions. She said in my initital visit that these proceedings would stay in WA because of what she was going to do. This ended up not being true. I ended up having to hire an attorney from another state which, in hiring her, was the main thing I wanted to prevent in the first place. Hiring her was a complete disaster to say the least. Her yelling, her deep personal "digs" and the manner in which she belittled me was unbelievably shocking. As I outlined, she did not return phone calls or e-mails in a timely fashion. To get an appointment with her after the first initial appointment was very difficult....I never did! After the first initial meeting, she did not explain anything to me. When the lett