My brother told me today after five days of calling him in a row the lawyer finally responded to him. He claimed that he has not filed the petition yet and was waiting for us to drop off the documents. Yet in an email, several of them, and on the phone he specifically told me that he would not charge the fee until the probate was electronically filed. And he would then tell me to drop them off. Instead he charged the probate fee to the card about 2 months ago and then did nothing and failed to respond to me or to tell me anything.
I called him after my brother told me what he had said, that his wife was ill, he apologized to my brother but not to me. He was rude and said he wanted to speak to my brother who he was filing the papers for who is the executor. I said he is rude and I am an equal inheritor of the estate that is being probated, I am the one who decided to hire him and I am the one doing all of the work for this. When he filled out the papers at first I had to sign a notarized paper agreeing that my brother is the executor etc.
I am not sure what to do. He told my brother he had not filed anything yet but I was supposed to drop off documents first, exactly the opposite of what he told me. It would make no sense because I don’t think a court would take documents for a case that was not filed. And he asked if I can drop off the documents to his office here now tomorrow which I can’t. So he charged us the filing fee and did nothing delaying the probate by at least 3-4 months.
I am going to call the court to see if anything was filed and call the bar association to see if they think we can get our money back etc. the contract says he can keep money for services rendered if either one wants to break it.
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