Complaint Review: Elizabeth McLaughlin Attorney - San Antonio Texas

This complaint is in reference to Elizabeth McLaughlin’s Family Law Office in of San Antonio, Texas.

I hired Elizabeth McLaughlin in November 2013 to represent me in effort to correct a child support order that was done by my ex-husband’s attorney; which needed to be redone.  I also needed to negotiate about the deed to my home which my ex-husband’s name was on and needed to be removed through the courts.

Upon hiring Elizabeth, I was very straight forward about the service I needed and financial situation I was in due to being a recent college graduate, unemployed, and not receiving child support since I had been divorced in 2012.    She and her staff took my prior divorce decree documents and quoted me an initial start fee of $1600. That price was to include the processes server fee, case filing fee, and first court appearance fee.  I paid her office $1300 upfront and agreed to monthly payments of $200 until the obligation was fulfilled.

As months went on and her office faithfully collected their money on a monthly basis from me, I barely heard from the office or knew what was going on with my case.  And since there was an $80 per hour fee to speak to any of her staff members and 250.00 to speak directly to her about my case I was reluctant to contact them about it.  Finally, one of her “paralegals” that was a relative of hers and not certified but taking paralegal classes, advised me that they had served my ex-husband with papers to show up in court.  I was happy thinking that we would finally make progress since about four months had went by.  I was also advised that since they had a difficult time finding my ex-husband with the addresses I’d gave them, it would cost me more money due to the extra search.

Upon going to court, I’d never spoken to Elizabeth prior.  I went into court blind and not know what to expect.  My ex-husband and his attorney was present and they presented me an offer.  He wanted me to sign over all of the arrears from non-paid child support in exchange for the deed to the home that had his name on it as a co-signer; I didn’t accept his offer.  I started to notice that Elizabeth didn’t seem to have my best interest because she asked me personal questions about our marriage that had nothing to do with the case, on a prejudge basis.  She also advised me that she knew his attorney very well, but didn’t explain that they are good friends and that she was her mentor.  She also advised me that the defendant wanted me to meet him with our children over an hour away, in which visitation had never been an issue.  I’ve never denied my ex-husband visitation, but seeing that at the time I had a vehicle that was over ten years old, I didn’t feel comfortable driving that far every other weekend.  I expressed this to Elizabeth, and she said “just do it, it’s a temporary order it can be removed during the final hearing”.  I agreed because I thought she was on my side; how I was sadly mistaken.

After the hearing I hadn’t heard anything from my attorney, no child support or update.  What I did receive is outrageous attorney bills for erroneous charges such as faxes, emails, phone calls, and document handling.  When I asked about the charges, I was advised that they would send me an itemized list of all charges and where the money had been paying them was going.  Not to mention there was some months in which I was required to pay more than the $200 per month agreement for additional services that I was totally unaware of.

In October 2014, almost one year, and thousands of dollars later for a child support modification case, I requested answers for my case.  I sent an email to Elizabeth and her staff requesting an update and asking about that status of my case.  Elizabeth then send me an email demanding an appointment with me since we were having a breakdown in communication.  Oh and the meeting will be an additional $250.  She advised me that if I didn’t agree to have the meeting, she would have to resign from my case.  Since I had already invest so much money into this case I decided to go forward with the meeting.  We met and discussed the case in which she didn’t say anything new from what she said in the beginning.  I started to realize, this is one of her money hungry tactics to get additional money from her clients.  I paid the $250 additional after the meeting and had a gut feeling that this attorney is a pure ripoff.  She made it seem as if she had my best interest in the beginning and turned the entire process about how much money she could make off of me instead of working on my case.

The document that I needed to amend my case is called a Nunc Pro Tunc Final Decree Of Divorce, which has the corrected child support information added, nothing else.  Elizabeth received the divorce decree electronically from the original attorney who drafted our divorce decree, so all that need to be done was a cut, paste, and refile in which she states there was a lot more to do.  In January 2015 over a year later, I asked her staff if the documents had been sent to the Attorney General’s Office yet.  Her office staff members assured me yes.  Since I still yet hadn’t heard anything from the Attorney General I decided to call them to find out what was going on with my case.  The Attorney General advised me that the last time they heard anything about my case was in December of 2014 to ask if they had received the documents via email.  The Attorney General said they advised Elizabeth’s staff that they hadn’t received any documents in regards to my case and still hadn’t.  I called Elizabeth’s office and told them that I would be by there to get a copy of the required documents to give it directly to the Attorney General’s office myself.  They advised me that that wasn’t necessary and assured me they would take care of it.  February 2^nd 2015, the Attorney General still had no record of any documents pertaining my case so I took the documents to their office on my own.  A week later, I received another bill from Elizabeth’s office with all kinds of charges that I couldn’t make any sense of.  I called here to discuss the charges and she advised me that she would take 20% off the bill if I paid her in full.  I expressed to her that I was very unhappy about the way my case had been handled, and the fact that I spent over $3500 over 50% more than I spent on my actual divorce and she still wanted more money.  I even had to drop paper work off myself, and received no updates on my case unless I called or emailed which cost additional money.  I felt like I was giving money away for a frivolous cause; in order to fulfill her greed. 

In the most recent incident, Elizabeth mails me a document releasing herself from my case and a leaving me a voicemail asking for more money, and threatening to send me to a collections agency after she broke our agreement in its entirety.  This attorney is very unethical, unprofessional, deceiving, and manipulative.  If you have a serious matter that requires an attorney, I would advise you to STEER CLEAR from Elizabeth McLaughlin Family Law in San Antonio, Texas.  Never like to express dissatisfaction with a business because I feel like there is good in everything, but this has by far been one of the most deceptive experiences ever.