Reviews

Debra M. Gold allowed my daughter to be taken from the court TPO hearing against my daughters ex and allowed her to be placed in a convenient room with his attorney. This is against procedures of the Atlanta Volunteer Foundation and court procedures. The attorney for the ex Charla Strawser, who also had volunteered at times with the AVLF and knows procedures and Debra M. Gold. My daughter arrived at court at 8:30 am and was kept until late in the afternoon between the hall out side this room and in this room and threatened they would inform the Judge of their own accusations that my daughter had smoked pot and the Judge could take her child and it was in her interest to drop the charges. They also executed a document to further entice my daughter to agree by offering her joint custody. Charla Strawser took the signed copies and never filed them.

I thought Debra Gold incompetent as a guardian. During the court hearing she distorted and embellished facts, jumbled dates of occurrences and events and seem to have little grasp of the case details and simply winged her testimony which because she was acting as a guardian for the child was almost impossible to contradict. Some facts were so distorted and her testimony so flaky many in the court had problems following what she was testifying. Sadly facts that were important she simply left out of her testimony. Given how important her testimony in in a case, to so sloppy is unprofessional. It was a joke. She seemed to have informed the opposing party of some of these distorted facts such that her embellishments became primary facts in their presentation. if you read the opposing parties initial filings those facts did not exist nor were they part of discovery such that the could have only come from Debra Gold. While everything you say can become part of the court record, assisting the opposing party before the hearing and not in a official report is i think unethical. Thus being open and honest with Ms. Gold put my case at risk. If you have Ms. Gold be careful what we say. She did not investigate and talk to or ignored many family members, witnesses and therapists that were given to on the onset of her engagement. She ignored obvious lies of the opposing party or forgot important facts such that she was easily duped or fooled. She disappeared for months and only came back to the case when the court scheduled a hearing to find out what was the status of the case. Then Ms. Gold rushed to make her decision. Toward the end of the case she stated many times to me and in the court her belief that one parent (most likely the mom) should have most of the time with a child and the other a few days a month and anything different is “more than one usually gets” or “more than they should have”. It is my opinion that if you want something different than a 1950s style parenting plan, Ms. Gold is highly unlikely to agree. Thus her non-investigation and incoherent grasps of the facts may be a moot point anyway as her final decision was and will be based primarily on her ridged sexist belief system than on the facts of the case. Thus, In my opinion, if you are stuck with her do not spend your time discussing parenting plans or anything outside her beliefs as you are just wasting your money and as she will likely help the opposing party, you will end up paying for that wasted time. Sadly the only fact she seems to remember is how much you owe her.