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.

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.