Probate Issues Part 2

I posted a while back on this. I am VERY upset to say the least.. sorry for the caps. After signing all of the needed papers in Late February early March, our probate has still not been filed by the lawyer who we paid a large fee to in December and who charged the filing fee in April I believe on my credit card. I started contacting him every 2 weeks or so starting in March after we signed the papers, to see when I had to drop of the original documents to the probate court and he stopped responding to me, even once I had called him at his office and I could tell he was there but did not come to the phone to talk to me. At that point he had charged the filing fee without doing anything.

Finally after my brother who is the executor called him every day for a week, in May I believe, and he finally answered a call or called back- he told my brother that nothing had been done because I had not dropped of the will. That is a lie! He told me initially that when he filed this he would then tell me to drop off the documents to the courts and in spite of me contacting me him numerous times over a three month period to ask what was going on and when I had to drop off documents he avoided/ignored me.

The instructions are documented in emails. He never told me when to drop off the will etc. and I found out later I could have done that in advance when I called the court, they store it in a vault and make a copy of it for you if you want one.

I called him right after my brother told me what he said and I was very upset but still remained as cordial as possible, reading to him what he had said in the emails. He became rude and said ok, you are right blah, blah... and then eventually said to me that he wanted to talk to my brother not me, the executor, who he is writing the letters testamentary for.

I am also his client and I was the idiot who made the decision to hire him, one of my BIGGEST mistakes ever.

After that I contacted the bar association and a few other probate lawyers to try to decide what to do. Our lawyer had wanted me to drop off the will the next day at his office when I finally spoke to him, after he had contacted my brother he finally answered a call from me. I could not do it because my car was being repaired for a few days. Initially he wanted me to send the original will out of state to him where he was for the winter.. which I refused to do because it could get lost etc. So we had agreed that I would drop it off at the court. Another option was drop it off at his office, but I chose the court. And now after all of this there was no way I would give him the original will because who knows what will happen and if he will ever file this etc. in a timely manner.

The bar association was also hard to get ahold of, no one answers the phone there, it took a week. Then I spoke with someone who I had spoken with before finally. She said we can make two complaints for negligence and for return of fee but the best way is to ask him for money back first. The lawyers all said they would have to do a new case and one said it could take 6-9 months and they wanted more money than we already paid this lawyer.

The thing I am most upset about here is I am on a time frame for a suit to hold the hospital and others accountable for my father's death. I had spoken to another lawyer via the bar association referral who said we have to file a late notice of claim and need the probate to do this. Our lawyer knew all of this, I discussed it all with him in detail, and he said he would help me to do that myself when the probate was done.

He has delayed this for 4-5 months now and I am worried I am going to lose my chance to do that. This is VERY important to me. This hospital also murdered my mother 30 years or so ago. I will not go into the details of what was done to my father but it was the MOST traumatic thing I have ever been through in my life and he was tortured for 10 months after they infected him with covid. At the end they caused a cardiac arrest and then harassed me to kill him nonstop for one month slowly stopping any treatment he was still receiving.

We decided the fastest way to get this done is to continue with this lawyer, so last Monday right after my close friend passed at home, I went to drop off the will. This lawyer has lied and gaslighted me now numerous times. He said he was going away for one week 2 weeks ago, and would immediately file this when he came back. Now I finally called when he ignored my text all week, and left a message at the office. Again someone said he is unavailable. But he did text me back finally and said he was on vacation for 2 weeks and just got back... so which is it? You were on vacation for one or two weeks?

The court told me to tell the lawyer to make a note that this needs to be rushed which I told him and he says he needs to know the deadline for a law suit- for which I don't know the exact deadline, it may be one year which means he has fucked up my suit if this is not done immediately.

I am realizing, something I knew already on some level, that NO ONE CAN EVER BE TRUSTED. The fee structure should be set up so that the entire fee is not paid until the work is done. He has had all of our money for a long time now and has done nothing. The initial papers in February had some serious errors in them which I told him to correct and that took another 2-3 weeks to do, if they had been minor errors we would have signed them. It has been nothing but delays and lies once he had our fee and started ignoring me.

I need to know if I have any recourse here if this stops me from going ahead with a wrongful death and medical negligence law suit.