kirsten johnson (kjohnson123)
1/5
I hired Jay Stover of Stover Law Firm, LLC because he was recommended to me and I didn’t know any other custody lawyers. After an initial conversation, He personally offered a “friends and family discount” of $900 to hire him. This was ALL he charged me and we went to court for months. Months worth of emails, txts, phone calls, court hearings, etc. Again, I am not a lawyer- I have no idea what they charge. I know what he decided to charge me. He would send me documents with other people’s info and I would have to proof read them to make sure they were correct- again I thought this was unprofessional, but I had never hired a child custody lawyer before. Issue after issue, he kept throwing in my face that he chose to give me a discount. I was sick of missing work, going to court, arguing, custody of my baby being affected, etc and I asked C to settle. We went to court for the third time and settled based on what I was willing to negotiate. Jay gave me a hug and acted like my best friend. Happy it was over and mostly happy it went my way- I knew to keep Jay in mind for future events because he already knew my situation and the background events.
Fast forward to this month- I called Jay and asked for advice on a situation that happened- he said we should go to court and I needed to pay him $2300. Obviously I asked why it would be so much and he said to “ compensate “ for what we would have to do- filing documents, months more court dates, etc etc. I don’t have $2300 so I go to the bank to take out a loan. I had $1000 to my name which was my rent money for the month. I paid him that IN GOOD FAITH that we were moving forward. However, as the day progressed, a lot of the behind the scenes events that he said would happen, did not happen. So I again ask what to do- and he assured me to move forward. After asking advice from a counselor/therapist, I was advised to move forward with therapy/counseling and see what came out of it. When I told Jay I would not be filing that day and I had scheduled a therapy/counseling session- I also asked for my Monday back- minus money for his “time”. He NEVER told me an hourly rate. He NEVER told me how much time he “used” and further more- I asked for this money back 3 times and each time he responded he would “get to it” over an entire weeks time. He finally decided he was charging me $250 per hour and that he used 3 hours. I have all these txts and emails. Then he decided he was going to charge me $200 per hour for 3.5 hours. While going back and forth on how he came to these variety of conclusions, he said that he personally typed out each document. Please see attached where Jay sent me SOMEONE ELSE’S Documents and info and then asked me to proof read it for him to check for errors.
I have all the screenshots of the phone calls- we spoke for 39 mins exactly. He didn’t even type these document's, BETTER YET proofread them, as it clearly shows. And on top of that- this is the only “bill” I ever received. And as you can see- it’s mistyped, not signed, or has any written amount that was charged or refunded.
To “type up” documents, take less than an hour phone call total, and all the other BS he magically came up with- he only refunded me $300 out of the initial $1,000 I paid,
That’s $200 less than he charged me the first time after months of court hearings and work. I am clearly sick to my stomach over $700 of my rent money, but I am also very disappointed that I was told he was such a good person and he has a daughter my age and he still chose to do me this way.
Please don’t ever use Jay Stover as your attorney.
He might can steal from me and there’s nothing I can do about it, but I can sure write this review. Please share.
