Melody B. Davoust

My family and I had a great experience w/ Melody Davoust. She was appointed as a GAL in our adoption case and did a wonderful, professional job! My son absolutely loved speaking w/ her. She made sure that he wasn't overwhelmed or uncomfortable. Our case was pretty complicated and she did everything she could to keep our costs down. I highly recommend Ms. Davoust. She is an outstanding attorney!

I was surprised to see she is listed as an insurance attorney. She was the guardian during my divorce a few years back. I recall that a guardian was really there to protect the interests of the kids, which is ultimately a good thing. The reality, however, is that the system, as it is set up, does not care about the interest and fate of the people that are at the receiving end. My first interaction with her was an emotional one in which I told here that I do not want to lose my kids and want to remain a father in a structure that works for both the mother and the father for the well-being of the kids. She promised that she would take my concerns into consideration. As the case went on, her interest was not much more than getting paid. The interest she showed in understanding our family and kids was very limited and she simply became a manager of emails and evaluated if appropriate wording was being used between my ex-wife and me, and making some boilerplate recommendations to the judge. She most swiftly reacted to her invoices, if they were not paid on time. This does not make her any different than any other divorce attorney, but it still left a sour taste with me until today and a paper book example of just how broken the legal system is in the way how people in need of legal advice are stripped of their money. The financial experience can be summed up in this brief conversation. My question to her: "Do you have a few minutes of time to hear my concerns?" Her answer: "Sure, you are paying me." I was never more insulted than that by someone I paid. Keep in mind that you are paying by the minute and a 10 minute phone call will cost $60 or more (not sure what her going rate right now is). The boilerplate recommendations lacked substantial insight. The recommendations were untouchable and useless in court. It is flabbergasting to me how people like Melody are so willingly destroying the lives of families. Understand that the recommendations she makes may be offensive and insulting to you and there's not much you can do about it and you need to get over it. However, despite her negative immediate impact on the kids, some of her recommendations were overturned less than half a year after the divorce since they went exactly against the interest of the kids and a mediator and judge recognized that. Things seem to correct themselves over time, although one could say that it could have been prevented if Melody had shown a little more interest in the case in front of her. In summary, it's a shame that people like Melody Davoust have so much power in today's court system and they get away with negligence and a selfish interest in filling their pocketbooks. Not much you can do about it. If you have to work with her, keep the human factor out of your conversations, treat her and these relationships purely as a business relationship. Keep track of the time you spend with her and compare it against your bills - she really took her leisurely time reviewing documents in our case and charged us dearly. Understand what you can expect from her and pay on time.

A very unprofessional attorney hired her back in the late 90's as my divorce attorney. Only to find out that there was a conflict of intrests between her and my x-husband. She hired my x-husband, to work for her as I was finalizing my divorce with him! She doesn’t care about you, or show you respect only calls when her payment is due. I could not talk to her about changes in the divorce settlement during my divorce; I tried asking her questions and had to follow-up with her secretary. She became hostile and aggressive, when I wanted a change in my settlement and she quit on me for no reason at all. She ripped me off, and didn’t even finalize the divorce proceedings. I had to return back to court almost 12 years later and had a judge rule on a portion of the divorce settlement. All because of her cost me $10,000, and only to find out she was working with my x-husband the entire time during my divorce!