Breeden Law Office - Raleigh, NC

Hiring the Breeden Law Firm hurt us more than helped us and I hope whoever is seeking a family law attorney reads in entirely before considering hiring this firm; and then looks elseware. We hired the Breeden Law Firm in July 21’ to help with getting custody of our son as he was having issues living with his mom and wanted to come live with us. Mr. Breeden and his firm thought we would have appropriate grounds to file for emergency custody at the time. We met with an assistant attorney who went over our case and continued with letting us know their policies, how they planned to work for us and pricing. Although it was a bit out of our price range, the firm gave us great confidence in them and that they would help us fight for our son. Our emergency hearing was dismissed and we had a red calendar date scheduled for January 2022. By the time December came around they had already charged us for $5,000 worth of work leaving a little over $2,300 in retainer and had requested $4,000 more to continue with our case to fight the opposing counsel on discovery & what he thought was a full day we would need to be in court. I paid him what he requested as we were a month away from our scheduled court date but let him know I could not pay anymore towards this case as we have exhausted our savings for this and was reassured that we should be able to finish this with what we had. We scheduled our appointment to prepare for our hearing with our attorney a week prior and were all set to present our case to the judge when unfortunately a superior judge passed away in the county and his service was scheduled for our court date- canceling court for the day and postponing our case. Our case was moved to April & we were very fortunate to get this date as they didn’t have anything else until the end of summer of 2022. Not even two days after we found out that we wouldn't have court in January and going through the hearing prep with our attorney we received another bill for January stating they would need another $3,000 for the trial. At this point I was beyond aggravated because we were all set and prepared for trial, literally just in days prior going through our case and no mention of any more money was ever said and having already spent over double digits for their representation it didn’t make sense to me. The opposing party requested mediation so we decided to hold off on paying any more money to the firm until after mediation. I followed up with our attorney on 3/6 and let him know there was no resolution in mediation and that we were still set to have court on April 6th and did not hear back from him. On March 12th Johnathan emailed us letting us know that the Attorney at his firm that was representing us the past few months would be leaving his firm and if we wanted we could follow him or pay him $4,000 more to try the case even though they mentioned no need of anymore money when we were ready to present our case January 19th. At this time I felt so let down by this firm and sent an email explaining my reasons why I didn’t feel they had done their job that they were hired to do. Looking back through my receipts the law firm charges for each communication with THEIR CLIENT and I have THOUSANDS of dollars wrapped up in charges just to communicate with them about things that they needed for our case. Jonathan basically let me know that the work they had done was the work they were paid to do and that he will not work for free and that we were welcome to come pick up our case file. Flabbergasted because I never asked him to work for free, I asked him to do the job I paid him plenty of money to do. He did not show interest or importance in representing us or our son. If I could give 0 stars I wish I could. $12,000 worth of payment for them to file, type up and print a case file with no representation in front of a judge & now left to defend ourselves.