Asked in Legal Malpractice for New Hampshire

Q: If an attorney lied to their client about custody laws and threatened to quit if you didn't agree can you sue them?

My attorney continuesly lied to me inorder to drag out my custody case and help the state max child support and awward mother custody. She would tell me if i exercise my constitutional rights the judge will just take my visitations away, shed tell me I miss understood the laws when I'd question the things she was doing and threatened to quit whenever i didn't want her to do something she wanted. I want to make a claim agasint her surety bond, how would i go about that? I understand this is touchy subject for other lawyers but I know what I know and I know I have a case here

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2 Lawyer Answers

A: Ordinarily a claim against your own attorney will be a claim for legal malpractice. You will be to prove that the attorney’s conduct fell below the standard of care of attorneys in the area and that that caused you to sustain damages, typically by losing a case you would have won.

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William J. Amann
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Answered

A: An attorney-client relationship, just like other kinds of relationships requires trust, among other things. It's clear that you do not trust your attorney. However, I don't see any benefit to your own lawyer to intentionally lie to you about anything quite frankly, let alone sabotaging you so you'll have to pay the maximum child support and lose custody of a child (or children). Perhaps she is incompetent or maybe she is competent but is a poor communicator. Whatever the case is, this is serious. As I tell all my clients, they will never have any unanswered questions when I represent them. They might not like the answers, sometimes facts and the law are stubborn things but they'll never have to wonder about the steps, risks, approaches and likely outcomes in their case. You should make a list of questions and go through them with your lawyer. Get answers to your questions. If that doesn't work, get a different lawyer. You can lodge a Bar complaint or pursue a malpractice case later. For now, get the focus on your children, custody and the finances of your case because you will be stuck with decisions about those things for a long time.

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