Very sorry to say that though Heidi came as a recommendation, our experience with her was frustrating, expensive, and unprofessional. Our divorce has some contested issues (having to do with breach of fiduciary duty and spousal support, and even though there are CA Family code guidelines about this, Heidi refused to offer any legal information. This resulted in my husband believing that there was no law that he might be challenged by, which made him very bold and determined to "win." I had doubts about mediation from the start, as I told Heidi that my husband is financially abusive and believes he is always right. She did not offer any sympathy or understand of my highly disadvantaged position, but kept telling me she would get us there. Though we had several sessions where we made no obvious progress, Heidi instructed us to each work with our lawyers to create our own versions of a settlement proposal, which she would jointly present to us for discussion and settlement. She asked for our attorney's contact info, so she could verify that our proposals were going to be "close enough" in spirit and dollars that we could negotiate a settlement. I then spent over 5 weeks and several thousand dollars to develop my proposal, as I needed both a lawyer and a financial divorce expert to help me. Heidi never called either of our attorneys, and when we submitted our proposals to her 2 days in advance of our session, she emailed us that evening, saying our proposals were too far apart, and that mediation wouldn't work for us, but that she was happy to meet with us again (and bill for more hours) to explain this in detail. So, she "fired" us, and never gave a satisfactory reason for failing to call our lawyers (she said (roughly), "I thought you'd be closer than you turned out to be"). Not only that, but I had asked her to file my petition for divorce, and though both my husband and I filled out and signed all the paperwork, her office never filed them with the court! On one occasion, her billing person also billed the wrong credit card when processing our most recent invoice. In summary, Heidi's approach of offering absolutely no legal information (perhaps she is not up to date with some recent changes to the law?) was not helpful, and she failed to ensure our process was on track by not contacting our lawyers, which would have saved us a lot of time and money. And of course, her office should have filed our paperwork. I do not recommend Heidi for any couple who have even slightly complex legal issues.
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