Reviews

Rebecca provides true client services with a personal commitment to each of her clients. She put my mind at ease knowing that when I die, she will be right person for my son to hire to administer my trust.

Rebecca is compassionate, caring and extremely smart. She works diligently for the best interests of her clients. I recommend her highly to all my friends and colleagues.

Rebecca is a professional, compassionate, and hilariously witty attorney I had a privilege of working with some years ago. Her clients loved her! Rebecca was a very respectful, and approachable colleague. I would love to work by her side again and I would recommend anyone who is looking for an attorney to seek her counsel.

When my father had a heart attack, and my mother had a stroke 2 weeks later, Rebecca Gardner and HMS drew up an emergency trust and estate preparation within a couple days and she came to my mother's house to perform the notarization. When my mother passed three months later, Rebecca worked with my sister and I to handle all of the filings, paperwork, and even attending court! She explained everything and made sure we always knew what was going on and why. We could not have made it through the way we did without Rebecca and HMS. Thank you!

Rebecca wrote our family trust documents. She explained everything clearly, asked good questions, and completed our documents in timely fashion. I have referred several friends and they have all been pleased.

Thank you for your legal assistance, Ms. Gardner! I felt very comfortable with you as my advocate.

Rebecca helped me and my wife through a legal document. We were completely in the dark on how to proceed and leery about a lawyer taking advantage of us in billing. Instead, Rebecca was kind, very professional, and incredibly fair in how she billed us. In the end, it was a completely good experience. We would absolutely seek her out for legal services in the future.

Rebecca helped both my husband and I and my mother-in-law creat living trusts. She is an absolute professional and makes the process feel less stressful. I'm a realtor and I recommend her to all my clients once they buy a home so they too can receive excellent service when making sure all their wishes and assets are taken care of in case of a medical emergency or passing. Definitely worth the time and money for the peace of mind.

My wife and hired Ms. Gardner to restate our existing trust and wills. The existing documents were up to date, but 10 years old. Only change in the restatement was addition of one additional beneficiary. We indicated to Ms. Gardner that, being retired, we wanted to keep the cost down and she suggested that we retain her on an hourly basic, indicating that her basic fee for drawing up a trust and wills from scratch was approx. $3,000. After the initial 1/2 hour meeting, we had only one additional meeting with Ms. Gardner, plus several short phone conversations with her non-lawyer assistants. To shorten this story, in the end we were billed a total of $2, 921.90 for this most simple "restatement" of the original documents. When I complained to Ms. Gardner she reduced the final billing by $350 (her hourly fee) I blame myself for failing to do my usual "due diligence" by shopping around and asking for a fixed price up front. Several friends (attorneys) agreed that this bill was indeed unconscionable, but that I should just file my complaint and forget it as going to arbitration before the State Bar of CA. would probably take about a year and I would most likely just be wasting my time. This review is not about legal competence, but excessive billing. So, to all others seeking estate planning, I truly recommend that you give Ms. Gardner a miss and do your homework, which I failed to do.

My family has worked with Rebecca on a couple occasions to handle our estate planning needs. She is extremely professional, courteous, compassionate, and very detail oriented. We have a family member with special needs and Rebecca was very thorough and patient helping us prepare our special needs trust. I recommend Rebecca fully without any reservation.

I have the deepest respect for Ms Gardner. She is highly intelligent, comprehensive and has the confidence and assertiveness desired in an attorney. Although she has a specialty, she has assisted me with many other matters and resolved all issues in a methodical and creative manner.