I received this comprehensive review of Brad Micklin by one of his clients and I am reposting here

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"The average citizen does not believe that these things are actually happening in our society, I can't tell you how many people have provided advice that may make sense to them, but they just don't "get" what is going on with our broken family courts. John's story and all the others here are just beyond devastating... and the children and parents are the only ones hurt by this. The only "winner" is the narcissist who lives for drama and for being viewed as the victim.

My husband has been in an 11-year battle with his ex and the family courts. We have had 7 attorneys, 4 therapists, and 5 different judges. We have hired forensic experts who told us we had a multi-million dollar suit, who ended up being frauds. My husband has been imprisoned for support arrears when he was unemployed. He lost his job on several occasions due to the rigorous requirements by the courts. In one month, he was forced to take off 6 days from work to attend therapy, evaluations, mediation, hearings, etc. When he did lost his job due to excessive time off, the court refused to temporarily lower his support payments. His ex was still receiving more than half of his unemployment, which was $225/week, whereas he was left with $190/week. This support is what she SHOULD have been living on in the first place, but she had just filed a motion to collect an additional $650 a month for alleged “child care” costs. My husband is unemployed and he is expected to pay extravagant child care costs, really? His ex-wife made $100,000/year so she was capable of paying these costs IF she truly needed this child care. We later caught her in one of her schemes. She included the “contract” for child care services, which was simply used for motion purposes only. Once my husband was ordered to pay these costs, she pulled their daughter from child care. His daughter attended a total of 14 days!!! My husband was then picked up on a warrant for arrears that she instigated claiming she couldn’t feed her kids. When we provided the fraud proof to the judge and lying under oath, it was completely ignored. Throughout the 11 years, she continued to provide fraud at every hearing. Even with all the solid evidence we had, the Judge never once reprimanded her for the fraud. We had one, Judge Melchionne, who started to see the pattern, but we were assigned a new judge at the next hearing. This Judge proved to be the worst ever, and has caused the most damage – Judge Thurber.

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The alienation with his two children began 3 months after he asked for a divorce, so throughout this entire 11-year battle, he has struggled to see his children. He was initially granted joint custody with one overnight and two visits per week, but his ex-wife quickly found every reason to block those visits and eventually made it so the kids refused to go with Dad. She filed frivolous complaints stating he was an unfit father for reasons that would blow the mind. “Dad let the kids sleep in their clothes one night and didn’t put pj’s on them, he let them have fast food for breakfast, he let them stay up until midnight,” and the list goes on. Dad was merely her ATM and she had NO use for him as a parent. He has gone years without seeing his daughter due to false allegations, and his son hasn’t spoken to him for most of the 11 years. Between the courts, the alienation, bad therapists, and losing his job, he was emotionally affected and now we know he probably had PTSD. A year or so later, he was laid off again. Again, the arrears built and the court refused to lower his support. Let’s just say, due to circumstances beyond his control, he was thrown in jail 3 more times! Even though we have been told since then that Judges are NOT allowed to put fathers in jail for child support arrears and that we don’t have debtors prisons, the judges obviously believe otherwise. Throughout this 11-year battle, my husband had to jump through hoops for these judges, and it STILL did nothing to help his situation. The Judges completely believed everything the narcissist said in court – without any proof. She continually presented fraudulent documents in court and even when my husband had proof it was fraud, the Judges did nothing about it. She was the victim. What is really mind boggling, is that his ex is an ex-felon imprisoned for embezzling $300k from her employer, and was fired at another job for stealing. We provided the court with this proof, and the Judges would say, “I don’t care about the past”. What about when the past continues to repeat itself?

I used to believe that much of what occurred was because my husband could not always afford legal assistance and was forced to attend court pro se. But now after retaining 7 different attorneys, we know that it probably would not have made a difference. We do know now that there are certain hearings you should never go to without representation. We also experienced as pro se litigants that they are treated differently and laws don’t apply and Judges are allowed to play “God”. Unfortunately, whenever we could afford an attorney, the Judge forced us to “work out a deal” outside the court room. We basically paid an attorney to be a mediator, and the Judge wanted no part of it anymore. These motions were all filed by his ex, not him, and they were always about more money and less time with his kids. In the end, my husband always lost because it was always about him giving her more money, and just a matter of “how much”. She came out a winner each time.

His ex files motions every 3-4 months for more money. Some Judges will say you have to show a “change in circumstance” to ask for more support, but our current Judge gives his ex more money anytime she requests it. She recently filed yet another motion and since it was regarding college costs and time with his daughter, we now know we should have hired an attorney. You would think the fact that his ex has filed 22 motions and he has filed 1, that this would be a red flag! It is difficult to hire an attorney and pay them a retainer, when you’re paying your ex 52% of your net pay. These Judges don’t care either if you live on the street, they don’t want to hear it! We lost this motion pro se, and filed a Reconsideration and the judge refused to even look at it. In fact, we were asking the Judge to decide on 10 items. She walked in the court that morning and announced, “I am here to do one thing today and that is decide college, I refuse to address any of the other issues in your motion”. The Judge then states, “I am going to pick a number from the sky and that is what you will pay.” We have all this in a court transcript, yet at our most recent hearing our attorney refused to present it as a problem. We have previous court orders limiting my husband’s college contribution and the Judge blatantly disregarded these orders. Judge Thurber does not allow my husband to speak in her court room. In fact, she often has a hissy fit when he tries to stand uip for himself, slams down her papers, and leaves the court room. She has made us wait up to 2 hours on some occasions! Once we lost the motion and reconsideration, we saved every penny we could for 6 months and hired the “best” lawyer in Bergen County. We did a lot of research and believed we had “our guy”. This attorney agreed my husband had been treated badly, and his rights were violated on numerous counts. He was never afforded a plenary hearing to decide college, which is a must in NJ. The Judge “picked a number from the sky” and that is also a violation. The list goes on and on… which led us to believe we had a slam dunk case. Don’t ever think this.

We hired Brad Micklin as our attorney. He seemed ruthless and we believe he would fight for our rights. What he failed to tell us is that his reputation is way more important than his client’s rights? He charged us $25,000 for ONE court motion! He billed us every 2 weeks, and bills were due “upon receipt.” If we didn’t pay within 24 hours, we were harassed, threatened, and Micklin refused to appear in court. When at the hearing, after months of prep and $20k in fees, it was finally time for Micklin to present our case and we were feeling confident. Judge Thurber immediately criticized Micklin for taking on an 11-year old “toxic” case. Well, that was the end of Micklin’s defense. He sat back in his chair and went silent. We lost everything that day and continue to be forced to live in a place for free because we cannot even afford rent. Meanwhile, my husband’s children live in luxury. Micklin just finally admitted that he chose to protect his reputation for future cases in front of this judge, and that it wasn’t worth it for him to fight for us because it was a losing battle. When we retained Micklin, he was the one who said my husband’s rights were violated and that he would fight his hardest to overturn the Judges many bad decisions. Well, the order that came from this hearing is for the next THREE years and there isn’t a thing we can do about it. We continue to pay his ex 62% of his net pay, with him having all the tax burden, and he sees his daughter ONE day a week and his son - never."

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