Reviews

Selling off a subsidiary can be a monumental task. We came to Mr. Cleveland for his previous history with us of incorporating or 38 year old company in 1994. Mr. Cleveland brought his wealth of experience to our initial meeting. He helped us to design a contract with short term and long term security for the sale of the company and protections and guarantees of sustained valuation, should the contract fail. All of this with nominal fees. I actually expected a much larger billing and was satisfied with his rate for a corporate sale. I, wholeheartedly, recommend Mr Cleveland and look forward to using his services again.

Untrustworthy, large bills for no results, failure to communicate. This was a trustee/guardianship situation, Mr. Cleveland allowed this situation to drag on for months and created a situation where only Mr. Cleveland and several other lawyers would benefit. For example when I asked a simple question - "what would be the advantage to me" where another attorney, the former guardian, would receive an entire amount of a trust as part of a TEDRA agreement Mr. Cleveland responded, "I do not understand your question". Mr. Cleveland, in collaboration with other attorneys, wrote an almost incomprehensible, 7 page TEDRA agreement and either was unable to refused to discuss it with me but expected me to sign it. Mr. Cleveland, hired to act in my best interests, allowed the former guardian of my incapacitated mother, a prominent established professional guardian, to essentially act as a, "guardian of the estate", months after her death. I am unaware that there is in fact such a position as, "guardian of the estate". In this case I, the designated estate executor, principal beneficiary of the estate, my son, the secondary beneficiary of the estate, two relatives, and several creditors of the estate did not receive funds for over a year after my mother's death. Mr. Cleveland, my paid attorney, required to represent my interests, refused to contact my son who apparently had some issues with my performance as a previous trustee/guardian in an attempt to resolve these issues. I drafted a proposal to resolve these issues with my son but it was ignored by Mr. Cleveland who carefully avoided discussing this. Mr. Cleveland was essentially controlled by the lawyer/guardian who had access to all the funds in my mother's estate during the last year of her life and over a year after her death as a self appointed, "guardian of the estate". Mr. Cleveland could have filed a motion with the court to discharge my mother's guardian that would allow me to proceed with execution of her will as estate executor, by distribution of funds to pay bills/cost and beneficiaries in a timely way but he refused to. I believe Mr. Cleveland was sympathetic to the former guardian and lawyer that represented the estate and had a primary interest to these two attorneys instead of to me, his client. Mr. Cleveland deliberately failed to inform me of a scheduled court hearing that I found out about during a periodic review of court filings at the court house. During an email exchange between Mr. Cleveland and my self a days before the scheduled hearing, Mr. Cleveland did say there was a scheduled hearing. Mr. Cleveland did not lie to me but avoided telling me about the hearing until I asked. Generally I found Mr. Cleveland to be evasive and untrustworthy, only acting in his best career interests - I fired him.