Law Office of Marie E. Reidy

I would not recommend voluntarily hiring this attorney. And this is not a disgruntled parent who had things go in the opposite way. I actually kept custody of my child but it was NOT because Attny Reidy did her job well.
The court assigned her to my case as a GAL (guardian ad litem). I thought she would be impartial, fair, and diligent but she was actually none of those things. Either that, I totally misunderstood what her job was.
I THOUGHT her job was to be impartial. I THOUGHT she would fact-​check all the accusations from my Ex. In fact, when she explained the process up front she said that there might be some back-​and-​forth as she does her follow-​up based on what we say about each other. Well, there wasn’t.
When she met with me, she asked if she could type her notes as she listened. I said «sure» thinking this would be efficient. However, when her final report was delivered to the court it was clear that all she did was regurgitate word-​for-​word what was said by my ex. I didn’t participate in any smear campaigns so it was very one-​sided and imbalance.
My ex must have had her ear for hours on end (because there were pages and pages of all these things that could have only come from him) and all she did was dutifully copy and paste it into her report. I tried to be objective and stick to the issues at hand when I met with her, so of course I had very little to say about him; I mostly just focused on my child and told her the truth about the way things were at my house. But you would have thought I was worse than Satan based on what she wrote about me.
Again, no fact-​checking took place. The final report had dates and incidents wrong — easily verifiable against easily attainable court and police documents but still she took the easy way out and just took his word. She even had reference to me being in the Marines which was ALMOST true — I was in the military but they got the wrong branch. Hello? It’s a wonder she even got my name correct.
To make matters worse, her report was actually about 5 weeks late. The judge ordered it due in July. Do you know when she finalllllly got around to turning it in? TWO DAYS before our court date which was early September. And that mandatory 4-​way mediation meeting that was to take place at least one week before our trial date was a colossal waste of time because… of course we still didn’t have her report and my ex wouldn’t negotiate anything because he was waiting to see what her recommendation was. Because of her lackadaisical attitude and work ethic, my attorney and I had to scramble around at the last minute to get a chance to review it before court.
She admitted to me that she had so many GAL appointments that she was behind and backed up. I guess it’s easy money when the court just hands her clients. She takes the money up front and then sits on your case until the very last possible second.
So, if you are considering hiring her, buyer-​beware. And if you have a say about which attorney the court will appoint as a GAL, please say «NO» to Marie.
Outcome: I retained custody. Again, it’s not because she was a woman and favored me at all. It was because I was the better parent but it’s amazing that she came to that conclusion based on what she wrote about me. Gracious!