1 /5 Louise Moore: Our appointment with Nicole was to primarily give Power of Attorney to our daughter and possibly update our nine-year- old Trust. We were happy with the first Trust and only wanted to make a few changes. There was a focus on fees right off and we were asked to make a $5,000 deposit that day and the hourly fee was about $315.00.
At our appointment, Nicole spent 1 1/2 hours primarily making copies of our old Trust and making copies of everything we had. She also drew many diagrams (that we looked at upside down from across the table). She didnt ask enough questions, so when we got home, I wrote a short letter with the names and proper spellings of our family members and other important information.
We received a draft very quickly of the new Trust and her assistant made 2-3 telephone calls checking our progress. The draft was full of errors -- including our names and especially the full name of our daughter who was going to have Power of Attorney.
We told the assistant that we were unhappy with the careless preparation and would go ahead with the Powers of Attorney only and not the Trust update.
The fine print of the Attorney Contract said that there would be no refund if a Trust draft was issued (no matter how quickly and carelessly it was made) and three telephone calls. It was obvious that we would lose the full $5,000, but we decided to look for a better attorney anyway.
We did find another Chico Attorney -- who gave us exactly what we wanted in a clear concise document and explained exactly what to do when the time came for surviving trustees to use the document.
