Ronald D Weiss PC

We in good faith tried to help this former client who did not inform us of a major problem in her case which made defending a foreclosure matter very difficult. This former client had failed to disclose to us that she was involved in a complex and emotional dispute with her hostile sister over the house that we were trying to save from foreclosure (that was owned by their sick mother, but where the hostile sister had a power of attorney that was not disclosed to us). The former client knew that the sister was trying to short sell the mother’s home to a neighbor and that the sister did not want our client to stay at the property or to prolong the foreclosure. This difficult family dispute undermined our efforts at foreclosure defense and belonged in surrogates court and had very little to do with our retention agreement with the client for foreclosure defense. Our former client continuously tried to assert that we needed to defend her against her sister for matters that she had never mentioned in the retention process, when our retention was only to defend the former client against the bank in a foreclosure matter. The former client’s sister had complete legal control over the fate of the property through a power of attorney form from their mother, as opposed to our former client, who was not able to show any legal rights to the property and was just trying to stay in possession at the property. Despite the advanced foreclosure status and a hostile sister with rights to the property, we defended the foreclosure as best as we could. However, we were gravely handicapped by our former client’s refusal, despite numerous calls and letters to heed our advice to also retain an attorney specializing in surrogate court litigation to try to challenge her sister’s power of attorney. If these unique facts, which were well known to the former client, were properly disclosed to us before we were retained, we would have advised the former client that without resolving her dispute with her hostile sister over the power of attorney form, that almost all the legal rights to the property were with her hostile sister. We spent major amounts of time trying to counsel and help the former client to no avail. Rather than work with us to try to fix a major problem that she never disclosed, the client was uncooperative and abusive towards my staff. Towards the end of our representation, the former client told my legal assistant that the neighbor who was going to buy the house in a short sale, and with whom the former client was in communication, was understanding of her situation and had let her rent one of his rental units/apartments down the street.