Attorney Ethan Marcus Complaints

I am having problems with Marcus Family Law Center and Attorney Ethan Marcus in San Diego.

Here is a little taste of what happened to me. I am not an attorney or a legal professional so this is all my opinion.



In March 2010, I had what was supposed to be my final hearing on my ongoing Family court case to reduce child support. According to Attorney Marcus, all was set and it it should have been a slam dunk. I had my most recent tax return and a complete documentation of my income and expenses. However, it turned out that he forgot to file the appropriate form.

When he prepared and submitted my OSC, he neglected to file an Income and expense Report.

According to the court, this is basic law practice and he neglected to that. When we went to court, the other attorney won, according to Judge Schall, because Attorney Ethan Marcus had forgot basic procedure.

Luckily I was not penalized for Attorney Marcus's mistake. Unfortunately, I did lose five months of retroactive child support payments. I had to start over and made plans to hire a different attorney. However, Attorney Ethan Marcus knew I was very upset and made me on offer.

This offer was made a day or two after the hearing. In his office, in front of witnesses (his employees) Attorney Marcus said that he would not charge me for the work that he had done between the previous hearing in August 2009 and the recent hearing on March 1.

As I had already lost the five months retroactivity and, according to Attorney Marcus, would not be able to get it back, I went with his offer and agreed.

In front of witnesses in his office, he said that "it would be like it never happened" and "that we would start the billing over from scratch" and use the deposit I had already given him in August 2009 to cover the next motions and hearing. I asked if that meant I owed him anything and he said no - we were starting over. I agreed to the proposal.

We re-filed, and a few days later, my ex and her attorney decided to settle. All was solved to my satisfaction. However, if Ethan had done his job right, they probably would have settled earlier before the March hearing and I might have also got thousands back in retroactive child support. So it goes... Is this malpractice? Does incompetence count?

As the case was settled, there was minimal legal work involved from Attorney Marcus and I expected to get a refund from my deposit.

However, about two weeks ago, I got a call from Attorney Marcus's office rescinding the agreement and telling me that I not only would I not get a refund as promised but that I now owed them money.

Attorney Ethan Marcus did agree to cut a few thousand from the bill as he had promised but said I now owed several thousand more from the time period in question. I disagreed. In other words, he would only reduce the billing by about half rather than for the full amount as we agreed.

According to the billing, for the recent work completed, which I was happy with, I was entitled to a refund of about $1750.

I got a series of threatening emails and phone calls. Because I would not agree to physically come into his office and argue this billing issue with him, not only would Ethan not uphold his side of the agreement, he was now going to charge me the full amount. In other words, as punishment for not physically coming to his office, he was retracting his written revised billing.

On top of that, he also refused to let me have my files back. I still do not have my files - about a month after the settlement.

I have repeatedly asked for a discussion of this issue - to be conducted via email so that there would be a written record. Ethan has refused to do that. In the email exchanges, neither Ethan or his office denied making the promise or provided any justification for only reducing the billings by half instead of by all as we had agreed. Last week, Marcus Family Law sent me a letter threatening to sue me.

Is this how you want to be treated by your attorney?

That is where we stand now. I have already contacted the San Diego County Bar Association. Later this week I will be working with the San Diego Better Business Bureau. Marcus Family Law Center already has two complaints on the site related to billing - both of which seem to have been resolved in some way.

Next blog entry will cover further developments as well as Marcus Family Law's new spin off business - the AAA Legal Relief Clinic.

You send responses or questions to vidiot3786@gmail.com.

I assume that there are others in the same boat. See http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/92131-ca-ethan-marcus-298758.html