I hate to publish this review, because as a human being I really like Mrs. Benouis. However I could never recommend her as your divorce attorney if you are going through a difficult divorce.
There were many elements missing, and I can only cover a few, but here goes: There was a lack of a strategy, mathematical competence, and frankly focus.
I was recommended to sign, and did an atrocious 'Temporary Orders' that was very beneficial to my ex, which incited here to not move towards a divorce at all. My eventual replacement attorneys told me it was the most one sided temp orders that they had every seen, against me. There were 6 figure math errors on the asset spreadsheet. I was charged thousands of dollars for this spreadsheet and I literally fixed it myself in 2-3 hours. There was significant work that I did regarding pre-marital financial claims and that I provided to Cathy, that was quite useful to my next attorneys, that she didn't even utilize. They just sat in a pile. My wife had committed criminal acts that Cathy refused to broach (even though I asked her to over and over), that my second attorneys were quickly able to leverage to get me a favorable settlement. Essentially Cathy placed no financial or time pressure upon my ex, therefore handicapping my settlement. Cathy offered 62% of the considerable estate to my ex at mediation. In the end my wife got about 45% of the estate based on my legitimate separate property claims. Pretty certain Cathy marks up outside services such as financial tracings, thousands of dollars since she sent me extra invoices that the Tracing company knows nothing about. She will charge you extra if you pay her using CCs whereas other attorneys don't. On more than one occasion she called me while driving around, with bad reception, 1x while driving through a drive-thru, and billed me $600/ hour for this. Eventually when I realized how bad my representation was, I made a list of my complaints, it was sort of a last chance for her to acknowledge her mistakes. She gaslit me more than my ex-wife, denying everything, messing up numbers in her explanation, etc.! I swapped attorneys (Smith & Bledsoe were my new attorneys) and when I told Cathy she made it clear that I would regret it terribly and be back. Boy was she wrong. My new attorneys quickly turned the tide of the case. They (new attorneys) filed a reciprocal Discovery and in it brought up my wife's criminal actions (things I had requested Cathy to do repeatedly, and she had all but refused) which instantly led my wife to pursue settling the divorce. My new attorneys were 66% of the hourly rate of Cathy, btw. In fact they didn't charge me for brief e-mail communications (i.e. can I swing by to talk), something for which I was billed for constantly with Cathy.
I wasted $10s of thousands of dollars with Cathy, and so much personal stress and extra time that was totally unnecessary as a result of using Cathy. I also almost lost an extra $500K or so. Nothing was going to make my ex-wife reasonable, but the correct strategy makes a huge difference. My divorce is now settled although I still have 3 weeks to go till I get my home back.
I really don't know how Cathy has so many glowing reviews. Maybe she was a different attorney in years past.
That said, I would not take down this review unless I received a significant refund on the services I paid for, that frankly were not worth the money.
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