James Harvey Bayse Jr.

In an early court hearing after being given five minutes and no counsel by my attorney during that time to decide whether to take my share of monthly rental income or a set amount that was considerably less, until the case concluded, I chose the former with the ultimate result being that I lost cons...iderable monies needed for me to pay for my representation. Much later I realized that logically with his years of experience Mr. Bayse should have given me counsel, advising me that my portion of the rental income might quickly become considerably less, or none at all, depending upon how creative my former spouse was in reporting the overall monthly rental amount. Thus, again, I really received no counsel at all and had to make that decision myself with the final outcome being that I received considerably less than either amount. After over a year and no progress and paying Mr. Bayse at least $14,000, in fees and then running out of funds he recommended another attorney because he said that the new attorney representing my former spouse whom we would be contending against at the next hearing had it in for him (Mr. Bayse) due to another case he had in which he (Mr. Bayse) had prevailed. Mr. Bayse then introduced me to a new attorney encouraging me to sign with him and advised me that that attorney would accept payment later from the sale of one of our properties. In all I felt that Mr. Bayse abandoned me. I am very happy that he has been successful in gaining visitation rights for fathers and has fairly prevailed for men needing his help. However, for me I felt as though he was perfectly happy to take my money with nothing of substance given in return. The lawyer he recommended was even worse. Better to check the batting average of how a lawyer prevails in achieving a client's, ( male and female's), fair share of community property rights before hiring him. Initially this attorney appeared like a kindly sympathetic person to me because at our first meeting he had to cut that meeting short because he told me he had to leave early to take his wife to the dentist. I had traveled over an hour to meet him. In retrospect my feeling is that that may have been simply a performance. For my case I believe I would have achieved an amount closer to my fair share of our community property rights had I dug in and done the work myself if I had the knowledge that I have today . Then at least I would have truly received a hearing and authentic representation. As it was after four years with the succeeding lawyer and coming down with cancer for the third time I had to fire that attorney because I could no longer take the stress of the duration of the case and so I signed everything over to my former spouse and filed bankruptcy. If I had had the knowledge I have today I know I could have much more efficiently represented myself or at least done much better research in hiring someone else. I chose Mr. Bayse from the internet from a high rating but no reviews appeared available to read from my recollection. Hence, I am hoping this review may help someone else.