Tara Kilby

She helped me with my divorce (started March and was final in May of 2024). A standard and easy default divorce with me keeping custody of my daughter. She was unresponsive, rude and short with me. She told me that someone in her office had passed away, and she was taking on their work and was busy.... I dismissed her attitude and the delay in all communication because I understood that was probably an emotional and stressful time for her... but it was for me too as I was trying to get me and my daughter out of an abusive marriage, and I wished she understood that. The divorce was final as a default divorce. Well, it turned out that Tara never filed the parenting plan with the courts after it was final, so only five months after the divorce, my ex remarried and his new woman decided that even though he wanted nothing to do with our daughter and hadn't taken care of her a single day of her life, that she wanted our daughter. Well, since there was no parenting plan with the courts because of Tara's lack of attention to my case, he did what his new wife wanted and took me back to court to demand custody. I have now been back and forth in family court for 7 months, only just now having my final hearing and racked up over $25k in legal debt with a new lawyer because Tara failed to file the parenting plan the first time.

My spouse engaged Tara to file our divorce. We had already been physically separated for 1.5 yrs and were successfully co-parenting under terms that we had documented in a decree (we handed her a completed consent decree and asked her to shepherd the process). She described the expedited summary cons...ent decree process in Maricopa County which we all agreed was appropriate. Then, we get a petition from her office. It doesn’t reflect any of the terms we talked about, and I now think was just copied and pasted from a boilerplate (there were irrelevant sections around splitting child care costs but we have older teenage kids; ages were wrong, the terms were largely court defaults). My ex emailed and asked them to change it. They gave him some b.s. about this being part of the process to file default terms but we’re doing the consent process so it doesn’t matter. Then . . . They filed a default. So . . . What could’ve been a 60 day process for $350 in court fees + 1/2 of the $3,500 retainer; has now turned into a situation where we have hundreds of extra court fees; plus retaining additional counsel to file responses that weren’t necessary. We trusted them to follow the process they described. I’m going to guess that it’s just incompetence - too many clients, poor systems, bad training etc.

Tara was confident our case would be fast and simple. She said we were "likely" to get some of our $3,500 retainer back. During the process for building our evidence, Tara made several clerical errors on papers even after we already provided her those details. Of course, we were charged for her to ha...ve to go back and correct her mistakes. At the end, when were expecting a refund, we were sent a bill for an additional $15. I went through the invoice hours and agreed but found that they had charged us the incorrect hourly rate, $50 more than agreed. They acknowledged their error and corrected our hourly rate but when the new invoice came it had ADDITIONAL charges. They decided since we were getting a refund that would charge us for items they didn't originally charge us for. When I questioned the front Admin Rachel, she tells me "You know, Tara didn't charge you for several hours that she could have." basically saying I should shut up and be happy I am getting a refund at all. It should not be a legal practice to send an invoice with a list of charges and then add to those charges once they realize they have to refund us. I would never recommend this attorney for this reason alone. Her representation did aide in our family case but not enough to offset her cost.

Tara represented me in the final stages of a long, difficult and highly contested family court matter. Tara was very thorough, supportive, intelligent, professional, and responsive. And her staff was a pleasure to work with as well. I got the result I sought. A logical, reasonable, and final conc...lusion to a dark period in my personal history. Tara and her team were essential to achieving this outcome and I highly recommend her services.